Hunter Hubbard didn’t have much of a trucking background when she and her husband, Tim, started Dice Mayhem’s Trucking in 2019, naming the business after their son, Dice.
Hunter's great-grandfather drove a fuel truck when he was younger. Other than that, she had no prior family history in the business. “I was always interested in automotive, trucks and things like that, but I never really got into it because I actually grew up in the city,” she said. Then she moved out to Winchester, Virginia, and met Tim, who was driving for a local steel erection company at the time.
In 2019, Tim “came home one day after we had our son and said, ‘I think I’m gonna buy a dump truck,’” she said. She supported the idea, and from the jump they determined to “go all-in ... Don’t really know what we’re doing, but we’ll figure it out.'”
And figure it out they have. The couple owns three trucks today -- two straight dumps that run as part of Dice Mayhem’s Trucking, and a recently-purchased road tractor with its own separate business and authority under the name Dice Logistics.
When Tim got that first dump truck in 2019, Hunter manned the home office, helping keep the truck maintained and on the road among other tasks. Then she decided “maybe I should get my license and do this,” she said. She made moves toward getting her CDL, also looking for her own dump. The latter came before the first was complete, she added. “I bought myself a truck before I had a license to drive it. I didn’t have a choice but to get” the CDL.
Her first truck did paving work, and it wasn't long before a paving crew damaged the braking system bad enough to put her in the market for a different truck. A friend joked the he’d sell her his 2005 W900 -- the joke soon turned reality. Shown below is the unit shortly after purchase. A rebuild project the Hubbards undertook thereafter would totally transformed the rig -- “It didn't look anything like it does now,” Hunter said.
When she bought it, it was a W900S sloped-hood model and a “weird purple, pink, mauve ... I don’t know what color you want to call it, but it was terrible,” she added. By the time she was done working on the truck, it was a truck show-worthy W900B.
“When I got the Kenworth," Hunter said, "I was sitting in the house one day trying to just look up measurements. ... They only make [a W900] L model and a B model and an S model, but they didn’t make a lot of S models because those were vocational trucks primarily.”
Custom S-specific parts were hard to come by -- maybe she could get B model parts to fit, she thought. “I did the measurements, got on Marketplace, found a hood in Pennsylvania, went and bought it,” she said. “Brought it home, a couple weeks went by and I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I swapped it as a direct pin-to-pin, just had to make a couple of adjustments. And there was my B model.”
The truck is outfitted with numerous lights, plenty chrome and much more, pictured here at the 2024 Mid-America Trucking Show.
Between Christmas and New Year in 2021 going into 2022, she took the truck off the road for a week, stripped it down, repainted it, “did all the body work, put all the chrome back on it and then rewired the truck from scratch,” she said.
The new-look Dice Mayhem's flagship made its truck show debut at the Mayberry Truck Show in 2022. Throughout 2023, she “kept coming up with ideas and working on it and switching stuff” with a vision in mind of what she wanted it to ultimately look like. In September that year, she invested in a new East dump body and had that installed just prior to the 2023 Mayberry event, with a sponsorship from Trux Accessories helping supply her with new fenders in 2024, along with some new lights.
“The downside is I got to work the truck to make the money, to make the changes to build it out,” she said. “So you’re trying to juggle working, and working on it, and trying to put it back together to get it back to work. It was an interesting journey.”
The journey has been just as interesting for the owners throughout all aspects of managing the business, illustrating a similar level of commitment to doing the job right, to succeeding despite any challenges that come their way. The Hubbards' commitment to maintain quality equipment and build business strength are among a number of reasons they've earned Overdrive’s Trucker of the Month nod for March, putting them in contention for the 2025 Trucker of the Year award.
Overdrive's 2025 Trucker of the Year program, sponsored by Commercial Vehicle Group and Bostrom Seating, recognizes clear business acumen and unique or time-honored recipes for success among owner-operators. Nominations are open for exceptional owner-operators, whether leased or independent. Nominate your business or that of a fellow owner (up to three trucks) via this link for a chance to win a custom replica of your tractor and prizes and perks from Bostrom and CVG.
[Related: Trucker of the Year honored with replica of his T600, new Bostrom seat]
'Keep digging,' sowing seeds for long-term success
Since Hunter Hubbard got her CDL and Tim bought his first truck in 2019, she's managed all aspects of the business -- driving and maintaining the trucks, handling billing, you name it. Hunter and Tim got their own authority that same year as Dice Mayhem’s Trucking. This past September, “I decided I wanted to go cow trucking, so now I’m hauling cows around,” using a customer's livestock trailer, Hunter added. That’s when they started their second business, Dice Logistics.
Generally speaking, it's been a roller coaster run these last years with both feet in truck and business ownership, yet she's managed it without too many butterflies in the stomach, as it were. “Trucking is a roller coaster, a complete roller coaster,” she said. “When things are finally somewhat level and going smooth, it’s either you get really busy or something breaks, or both. It’s just a neverending roller coaster.”
She and Tim have been able to weather ups and downs maybe better than some because they work on their own equipment, she said. “That helps a good bit with trying to save money and cut costs. But parts and everything, tires, just regular maintenance at this point is so high.”
[Related: Save money on maintenance with smart purchase practices and DIY acumen]
She said she’s hopeful to see a return to more moderate costs to keep the equipment running strong, especially since “rates are the same as they’ve been, as they were when we started” more or less, she added.
Tim Hubbard operates their 2002 Peterbilt 357 tri-axle dump, Hunter the 2005 W900 quad-axle she built. The 1998 Peterbilt 379 extended-hood tractor Hunter operates, too, primarily hauling cattle for the Dice Logistics business.
The W900 was built for asphalt work -- it's got an asphalt bed, an asphalt lip “to go under the paver,” she said. The body's double-walled and insulated and has slide-back tarps that cover the sides to keep heat in. She’ll occasionally also haul dirt and gravel, too, noting that after all the work she's put into the W9, she'll be its only driver.
Tim's 357 “is set up to do just kind of all around the board,” she said. “It does have an aluminum body, which kind of hinders some of the really, really big stuff, but we lined the floor with” two-inch-thick oak boards “so we can still haul somewhat big stuff. We just kind of have to be mindful of it.” With that setup, the truck usually “goes to dirt jobs, stone, anything like that,” she added.
The Hubbards invested in a shop facility for maintenance out of the elements. They’re still working on getting the shop set up just how they want it, but they keep parts on hand to avoid outside shop costs -- brake chambers, oil, filters, miscellaneous fittings and more, “stuff you go through regularly,” Hunter said. Not afraid to tackle a new project, both Hubbards have continued to actively seek out education, learning plenty new along the way as needed.
They change oil every 15K-20K miles, grease every other weekend. The only thing they don’t really do in-house is major engine work, but it's something Hunter's got her eye on for the near future. She’s replaced transmissions, rear ends, dropped the steer axle to replace leaf springs and king pins, so she’s not afraid of the big jobs. Her mechanical green thumb came straight from the family. Her father has been in automotive her whole life, so she grew up around the shop world, watching and learning things on the automobile side of things. Tim’s background in trucking was working for Mac Manufacturing -- he had a background in mechanics as well.
[Related: Success through self-help, lane change: 2024 Trucker of the Year 'exit interviews,' part 1]
Dice Mayhem’s Trucking works with a dozen or so different companies directly, depending on construction projects that are going on in the area. Jobs could feature “site work, getting ready to build a new shopping center, a new store, restaurant, new apartment complex or housing development," Hunter said. "We have companies that work directly for that contract with the state to do interstate paving,” too.
They're well set up, but it hasn’t been easy these last six years with authority. Companies they have worked with have gone out of business or been absorbed by other businesses -- in situations like that, it's not uncommon for small trucking business to get lost in the shuffle of transition.
For example, about two years ago, Hunter said, the main company they worked for absorbed another company that had its own trucking contractors -- the bigger company then had to work with those companies as well, which cut some of the work Dice Mayhem’s had been doing. Additionally, it’s become harder to compete for work given the company's size. “The more trucks you have and the bigger you are, the higher you are on the priority list. You get contacted to work more."
Enter your business in Overdrive's Trucker of the Year competition for a chance to win a custom scale replica of your tractor as trophy but also a new seat and/or other perks from program sponsor Bostrom Seating.
The road tractor and Dice Logistics is a play for future growth. Hunter said she’s in search of a steady gig hauling livestock that's local/regional, to find a real “home” for the business. She'll probably float between driving her dump truck and the road tractor this year, depending on the work that’s available.
Hunter Hubbard is using this 1998 Peterbilt 379 in her Dice Logistics business, which she's looking to really get off the ground in 2025.
[Related: McCormick Trucking owner-operator's dream cattle hauler: This 1990 Kenworth W9]
Dice Mayhem's perseverance keeping the business going despite external factors working against them Hunter attributes in part to the company they keep -- customers, primarily. She urged aspiring owner-operators and current business owners take care to “get in with a company that treats you right and treats you fair, takes care of you,” she said. “That makes a world of difference.”
Yet the biggest quality that she sees underlying her success is all mindset. “If you have your mind set to do it, go for it," she said. "I mean, there’s nothing stopping you but yourself. The worst thing you can do is fail, but at the end of the day, nobody wants to fail." As Overdrive's 2024 Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber memorably put it, "99.9% of success is desire." Failures are just opportunities to learn.
If you want it enough, Hunter said, "you’re going to figure it out one way or another.”
Bad days will happen, she added, “but you’ll sit back a month down the road, two months down the road, and be like, ‘That was rough, but hey, we’re still here.’ You just got to keep digging on it.”
Enter your own or another deserving owner's business (up to 3 trucks) in Overdrive's 2025 Trucker of the Year competition via this link.
