During an interview with Overnight Drive Radio host Steve Sommers at the Mid-America Trucking Show Overdrive honored 2024 Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber with a custom-made 1/42nd scale model of the 1995 vintage aerodynamic Kenworth T600 that he's trucked over four million miles across his decades in business, as well as a new seat from Trucker of the Year program sponsor Bostrom.
Kitzhaber won Trucker of the Month in August, when he told Overdrive the story of how he originally started driving the T600 while working as a company driver for Millis Transfer. Within a few years Kitzhaber had bought the truck from Millis and took on the task of meticulously maintaining her with the help of JR Truck Repair and Fabrication in later years.
Kitzhaber's "philosophy is it’s cheaper to do it now rather than have to call in a tow truck and doing it on the road," where it'll likely cost you "double the money," said Adam Pratt, the owner of the Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin truck shop. Pratt said Kitzhaber's maintenance checklists, plural, can take up to six hours for him to complete, but perhaps it's that time flies when you're having fun.
Keep tuned for a close-up tour Kitzhaber gave Overdrive Video Editor Lawson Rudisill around efficiency-minded mods to the long-running T600 at MATS.
"I got into trucking thinking I would just do it for a couple of years just to see the country," Kitzhaber thought to himself in the 1980s when he moved on from managing a Radio Shack to trucking. "Then I would get a real job."
Obviously, he got a little waylaid along the way, and it just so turns out this Monday will be his last in the trucking business, with a load for longtime customer Menard's set to drop that day before a run back to his home in Eau Claire, where his longtime customer's headquarters is located. Truly, he's going out on top with the Trucker of the Year honor.
Bostrom Seating and Commercial Vehicle Group's Jason Gray (left) and Kitzhaber pose with the award check and Kitzhaber's T600 on an extra windy Friday afternoon at the Louisville Convention Center.
Kitzhaber's grip on the business is as good as his grip on a wrench, with strong financials that impressed judges.
Host Steve Sommers asked Kitzhaber to weigh in on the "big debate" at the center of small-business trucking -- why become an owner-op when you could potentially make about as much money as a company driver without "all the responsibility?"
"There is some truth that if you’re working as a company driver you can probably make about this same as an owner-operator without the responsibility, but if you're an owner-operator that's a businessman, you can make more money," said Kitzhaber. "It's more challenging, there's more risk, but a lot more reward."
The secret to Kitzhaber's success? "It was just being a businessman and treating it like a business," he said. "Not everyone has that mentality.
Not everyone indeed.
Kitzhaber will leave the industry poorer with the absence of his seasoned professionalism, but he's also leaving behind some gems of knowledge with much of his wisdom distilled into a two-part feature you can read today on the Overdrive Extra blog, and insights delivered via more than one edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, along with other 2024 Trucker of the Month honorees.
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.
