Owner-operator Patrick White’s trucking career so far has been defined by “determination and perseverance” -- words used by White’s wife, Ashlyn, when she nominated Patrick for Overdrive’s 2026 Trucker of the Year award.
It’s one thing for a trucker’s wife to sing her husband’s praises, but Patrick’s story highlights that theme of doing whatever it takes to survive and thrive as a one-truck business.
Patrick White
Regular readers may recall part of Patrick White’s story from last summer when an incident at a customer with a forklift ended with him falling some 12 feet from the top of a load of metal and shattering his right leg, requiring emergency surgery. Likewise: Downtime out of the truck during what had been already a difficult moment for business.
Yet he was prepped as best anyone might be for a disabling injury like that -- it wasn't the first time the flatbedder was similarly sidelined. Twenty years prior in 2005, he fell and broke his left leg and he was out of the truck for two weeks. This past year, it took him about three weeks to get back on the horse -- with a huge assist from Ashlyn, he said.
“The only reason I could do what I did, though, was because my wife did all the hard stuff,” he said. “She got out, she strapped the load, she tarped the load, she did everything I couldn’t do. And I drove the truck."
If not for her work, "I never would have made it through it with the business. I would have lost it,” he said. Other friends and family were there, too, with a helping hand.
[Related: Owner-operator's injury a stark reminder of trucking's danger]
White's well aware the risk involved in flatbed work, to say the least. “It’s part of the business,” he said. “When you have to tarp, you have to get up there and tarp. And if the places you’re tarping don’t offer fall protection or any kind of help, it’s got to be done” and that's that.
The determination to keep going, the perseverance to keep his business in the black regardless of the obstacles in front of him. ... These qualities earn owner-operator Patrick White the nod as the first Overdrive Trucker of the Month for 2026, putting him in the running for the 2026 Trucker of the Year award.
Overdrive's 2026 Trucker of the Year competition recognizes business acumen and unique or time-honored recipes for success among owner-operators. Nominations are open for exceptional owners, whether leased or independent (up to three trucks). Enter your own or another owner-operator business you admire via the links.
“He has never given up, even when most said he should have,” Ashlyn White said. “There aren’t an over-abundance [of owner-operators] that have the drive to do what it takes, no matter what. Some of the things we have overcome, most would’ve thrown it down and put ‘for sale’ on everything. He always finds a way to keep it going.”
[Related: Credit where credit's due: Trucker of the Year builds biz to sustain, pays it forward]
The journey to trucking success
Patrick White’s trucking story goes back to when he was a kid growing up in West Virginia. His family lived near a sawmill, and he “watched trucks go up and down the road,” he said. “I knew from the time I was walking, I was going to be driving.”
He jumped behind the wheel for the first time at 17 doing off-road work “pulling logs down off the mountain.”
He worked for a variety of companies for about five years doing “a little bit of everything” -- pulling flatbeds, vans, logs, lumber, bulk tanks.
He bought his first truck around 2005, and had that business for about seven years. Yet a divorce from his first wife led to selling off the business and going to work for Cundiff Trucking out of Wirtz, Virginia, where he'd work for the next seven years.
Yet he never fully let go of his instincts, his desire to be in business for himself. Becoming an owner-operator had “always been a dream of mine, just to be my own boss and do my own thing and do things my own way,” he said. In 2019, after he married Ashlyn, the Whites launched Top Notch Transport together and build a famly legacy.
“We started this while I was pregnant with our oldest daughter and decided we would keep going until we just flat out couldn't," Ashlyn said. "So that when we are done with it, our now three kids will have the company to take for their own.”
Patrick noted the couple "had all of our ducks in a row,” with customers lined up as refuge against fickle load-board spot freight.
While at Cundiff, White had done a little bit of everything with the fleet before striking back out on his own. “I was kind of the truck boss," he said. "I handled all the hauling and the trucks, and I trucked, and when I left, that hauling came with me whether I wanted it to or not." Many of the customers, he added, weren't "going to work with the other company, because they’d been working with me.”
Going on seven years later, White still hauls for some of those customers and has added others to the mix, too.
“A lot of the people we were working for didn’t survive the economic fall of the last few years,” he said.
But he’s been able to keep direct customers lined up.
[Related: Keep an open mind -- eyes and ears, too -- for new customer opportunities]
“We negotiate fair rates, we deliver what we promise, and we go above and beyond,” he said of the relative rarity of holding onto direct customers as a one-truck operation. “I make it a point to go above and beyond what the expectations are, because that’s how you keep business and that’s how you gain new business.”
White works with brokers, too -- those he's built relationships with through the years. Braden Hammond of Reckart Logistics said White is one of the most reliable carriers he's experienced.
"Call him and ask him to do something, he's going to get you taken care of," Hammond said. "I have no issues, ever, with Patrick, which on the broker side of things is huge. He does what he says he's going to do."
In Hammond's world, "that's a big deal."
[Related: 2001 Peterbilt 379 is 'pride' of Top Notch Transport small fleet]
‘Blessed to see more good than bad’
He started Top Notch hauling in a 2001 Peterbilt 379 for the first few years, then found his way into another 379 of the same vintage that he bought from a friend. He hauls in that yellow Pete today, pulling a 2016 Transcraft step deck.
The post-COVID boom and the years-long market lull that's followed, coupled with rising parts, equipment and other trucking business costs, hasn’t been steady-as-she-goes for nearly anybody around freight. Virtually every trucking company, regardless of size, contended with a new "normal" the last four years, whether they liked it or not.
For Patrick White and Top Notch Transport, “it’s been rough. I mean, we’ve seen good and bad," he said. "We’ve been blessed to see more good than bad, and been blessed to be able to stay in business.”
The saving grace for White, he believes, is mechanical prowess. It's allowed him to do all of his own maintenance. “Everything is done in-house,” he said. “I think that’s really saved us from the downfall.” He’s done everything from rebuilding engines and transmissions to rear ends, trailer work and everything in between.
Close friends are good truck mechanics, too, so he’s learned as much as he can from them and still leans on them when he runs into something he can’t figure out himself. “I just kind of stepped into” mechanicking “because I couldn’t afford to pay the shop rates," and definitely doesn't want to now, even if he could afford those rates.
"Besides that," he added, "I like doing my own work." He knows if he does it himself, “it’s done right and it’s safe.”
He also credits Ashlyn for helping manage the business and step into any and every aspect when needed.
“He tries to teach everyone he can everything he knows,” Ashlyn said. “I didn’t know very much about trucking when we got together,” noting that she “had been around trucks, but not in trucks. Now, because of what he’s taught me, there isn’t much with them I can’t do -- mechanically, logistics, business. He’s taught me the ropes on all of it.”
[Related: Small-biz trucking success, with family assist: The woman behind owner-operator Jason Shelly]
That “determination and perseverance” Ashlyn said was a big reason she nominated Patrick is another reason Top Notch Transport has made it through the hard times, particularly after Patrick’s accident last year.
After he had surgery and a rod put in his leg, “I got back in the truck and done my own rehab,” he said. “I went to the doctor one time for a follow-up, and that’s all I’ve done. I have kids, and this business is all of our lives, and I had no choice but to put myself back out there. I mean, I want to survive. I want to make it, and I want to leave something to my kids. So, that was my rehab -- going back to work.”
The Whites' have three children, including one under a year old. Within the last year, the couple decided their lives and their business would be better off if they shortened routes and focused more on regional hauling, so they’re home most weekends.
“We’ve kind of figured out that it doesn’t matter what you’re doing with the way things are in trucking today,” he said. “You’re going to come out with the same amount of money whether you go cross-country or if you stay in a few states.”
They mostly stick to East Coast lanes, going occasionally as far west as Iowa. “That’s pretty much our operating area now,” White said. “We don’t go much past Iowa anymore.”
White's got a positive outlook coming into 2026. “I look for this to be a good year, I really do. I mean, trucking’s kind of got its cycles. Anybody’s been in it for a while knows that. And we should be coming to the end of this bad cycle. ... It’s time for the upswing, and we’re just patiently waiting for it.”
That optimism isn’t just hope, though. He said he’s seen improvements not only in rates but in demand for his services. “What I’ve seen the most of is the amount of phone calls we get, just people needing hauling done. Things are moving good right now.”
It’s certain that no matter what the markets throw at the Whites and Top Notch Transport, they have the tools to see it through to the other side.
“There have been a lot of trials on this run, but this company would not have survived if it weren't for his drive and determination,” Ashlyn said of her husband.
