Trucking can be a lifelong, generational endeavor. Many owners start out in business from an early age, growing up with parents or other family trucking, then carrying on the legacy.
For others, though, it serves as a second career.
That’s the story of Finksburg, Maryland-based owner-operator Jeffrey Crise, who was in his 50s when he first took the wheel as an owner-operator. At 65 today, Crise has 12 years' experience as an owner following a long career as an executive chef.
Over a few decades-plus in restaurants, though, trucking was always in the back of his mind. At just 17 years old he got his first up-close experience with a truck, sparking an interest, he said. But “I sort of got overwhelmed by the restaurant and hospitality industry, and I never went forward” with trucking.
Jeffrey Crise
A couple years in, he upgraded to a Class 8 tractor-trailer setup and was humming along with several trucks running under his authority -- then Hot Shootins Haulin -- until post-COVID turmoil slowed him down.
By 2024, with trucking “down the tubes,” as Crise put it, and despite a move to heavy-haul as a last-ditch effort to get the business back on track, Crise shut the business down.
In his early 60s, he might have ridden off into the sunset with retirement. But over a short eight-month span of time spent with a close eye on where the industry was headed, he began to sense opportunity.
“I could have retired, but retirement just wasn’t for me,” he said. “I got another dually, and I went with a large trailer ... it’s a 45-footer with air ride and disc brakes” -- something that could handle 20,000 pounds or so on the deck.
He’s slowly working to build business, now rebranded as A&J Transport & Recovery under the same USDOT and MC number as before, mostly hauling equipment out of the nearby Port of Baltimore to surrounding areas, leaning on the many connections made through his first decade in business.
Crise is about to put into service a 2019 Peterbilt 579, planning to split time there with a driver he’s hired on.
The owner-operator's can't-quit instincts, and close attention to detail in his business, earn Jeffrey Crise the nod as Overdrive’s Trucker of the Month for July, putting him in the running for the 2026 Trucker of the Year award.
Owner-operator Crise joins fellow Truckers of the Month in competition for Overdrive's 2026 Trucker of the Year award. Nominations remain open for exceptional owners, whether leased or independent (up to three trucks). Enter your own business (up to three trucks), or another you admire, via this link.
Building, restarting after hard times
Crise was new to the trucking industry when he got his CDL, MC number and USDOT number, but he wasn’t new to business ownership.
“It wasn’t a new game for me,” he said.
He strived for more carrying capacity after those first couple years in the F450, upgrading to a Mack Anthem, then again after a short time to a 2005 Peterbilt 379. “That was my baby,” he said.
The C15 Cat-powered Pete caught fire due to an electrical issue in the fuse panel in 2022, and the truck was "a total loss," he said -- a contributing factor to what put the business on the backburner a couple of years later.
Crise had his 379 looking good, no doubt, during that first stint in business.
The business nonetheless had grown through COVID and the boom in late 2020 and through 2021 to as many as five trucks by the time 2024 rolled around, when he made the tough decision that he could not continue in the market conditions of the time.
Yet he could see “big changes coming,” he said, as the year rolled on into a new one, with a new administration in Washington and the enforcement efforts around non-domiciled CDL holders removing capacity, among other moves. All of it he felt had positive potential.
He kept a close eye on DAT and Truckstop.com, watching the market. "It turned out to do exactly what I thought it was going to," he said.
Despite his wife's attempts to sway him against a restart, he felt it was something he had to do.
“I could see it because I was adamant, always checking the industry, making sure I knew what I was talking about,” he said. “I was a failure -- to me, myself, I failed, and I knew that opportunity was still there.”
This year, Crise has been piloting a 2024 Dodge Ram 3500 Laramie, pulling his 45-foot open deck trailer. Starting the first week of August, he’s putting the 2019 Peterbilt 579 pictured up top into service toting a 53-foot Transcraft stepdeck.
He’s owned the Pete since late last year, biding the time with efforts to crack “one of the biggest dilemmas,” he noted. "Finding a driver," that is. "Very difficult to come by" as a small operation, unable to offer health insurance and other common employee benefits. “You don’t have all the instruments that a bigger company does.”
But he's poised to bring in an experienced operator he’s comfortable hiring next week to pilot that 579 primarily while Crise, for now, runs the Ram he knows well. “We’re going to take it from there and go strong, and hopefully I can build back to what I had,” he said, but with a goal to limit growth for better management.
Three trucks max, he said, "more manageable, and especially when I’m driving.”
His plan: To eventually move into the office and handle freight booking/dispatch, maintenance and everything else that comes with trucking business ownership outside driving.
[Related: Hedge against bad brokers: Trucker of the Month insists on cash before unload]
Keeping promises, and the wheels rolling
Crise[s 2024 Dodge Ram 3500 Laramie and trailer.
When Jeffrey Crise returned to business last year, he brought lessons from his first stint as an owner with him.
He operates on what he calls the “PSC Promise” -- Punctuality, Service, Communication. And his punctuality and service depend on trucks that run and show up on time.
Throughout most of his decade-plus in business, he’s been able to keep that promise, sourcing freight both from brokers and some direct customers. Since returning to business a great deal more has come from a few brokers he’s worked with routinely. Both sides of the arrangement know what to expect, he said.
Mindy Brown, a driver manager and sales representative with the Icon International brokerage, commended Crise’s service. “Jeff does an amazing job,” Brown said. “I know all I have to do is send him the info and he runs with it. He is excellent at communication, so you are always informed if there are any hiccups.”
Another lesson of sorts: Trucks can, and will, break down. When he bought the 579 last year, he opted for an extended warranty, “which covers everything, even the APU system,” he said.
Beyond that measure of protection, he's “mechanically inclined” himself, too, he said, and goes over his trucks with a fine-tooth comb at least once a month to ensure everything is in good working condition.
Much of his freight is equipment coming out of the Port of Baltimore, and he's picky about the loads he chooses and where they're going. He prefers to stay within about a 500-mile radius of home base, and for drivers the goal will be that they get home at least once every week or two.
“I really, really want them to get the best-paying loads possible," he said, and benefit from the rate: he's paying 30% to the employee coming on in the 579 in August. "I won’t use these fly-by-night dispatchers.” All loads are “booked by me, and I make sure that it’s going to be beneficial for them and beneficial for me.”
Crise gets an assist on the financial side of biz from an accountant he’s known dating back to before his time in trucking. He handles most of the day-to-day bookkeeping himself, and the accountant handles filings like Heavy Highway Vehicle Use Tax (Form 2290) and IFTA.
[Related: Owner-operators' truck taxes: Form 2290 HHVUT, registration, more]
Crise also uses TAFS (now eCapital after a 2024 acquisition) for factoring. “I pay 2%” for factoring, he said, “and there’s no way in the world you’re going to get somebody to do all of this for 2%. ... I think it’s just a value” in time saved no handling collections. He touted a new same-day-pay feature in the TAFS service -- all he has to do is submit an invoice and the money is available usually within a couple hours, ready to be transferred to his bank account.
The biz reboot has piled on the expenditures over the past year with the purchase of two trucks and two trailers, but his outlook for 2026 remains positive.
“I think the last half of this year is going to be very, very prosperous for me,” he said. “I’ve been doing a lot of work myself, and now I want to start laying back a little bit," steer the ship with an eye on "what I need to do."
Simply put, looking ahead, that's "make my drivers happy and make money" to ultimately improve operations, he said, and "control my business a little better.”
[Related: South America to Central Florida, independent trucker builds biz for longevity]
