It's been a long run for White Pine Transport owner-operators Dee and Bev Zeeman, headquartered in Utah and moving roofing materials, pipe and more mostly north to points in Montana, Idaho and surrounding states.
Dee's pushed 6 million miles over the course of a now 45-year career behind the wheel, Bev noted with her nomination of Dee for Overdrive's 2026 Trucker of the Year award.
Since 2018 the pair have run White Pine with their own authority in a second go at trucking business ownership fully on their own.
It's most certainly a team effort, with Dee behind the wheel and in the shop as need be, Bev handling office duties.
- Their first run as business owners was between 1995 and 2001, after which Dee took more-local company driving work to be home with children.
- The pair complement each other with mechanical/operational know-how (Dee), a firm hand on dispatch, bookkeeping and compliance (Bev), and good instincts for personal relationships in business.
- Dee's many miles include exactly one accident, more than 40 years ago when he was young.
- Bev's been resurrected at least once, she noted: "I was supposed to have died in that accident." (In truth, she wasn't even in the truck, as people from all around her Canadian parents' restaurant stopped by to offer their condolences after rumors circulated.)
A more-recent close call illustrates just how closely the pair have relied on each other through many decades trucking, and as a family.
Dee and Bev Zeeman
"I fired up the truck and went back into the house for a few minutes," he said. He was holding a t-shirt in one hand and dropped it, involuntarily. Bev could see what was happening, and insisted they get to the hospital as quickly as possible.
Dee was having a stroke.
Doctors at the hospital acted quickly, key in any stroke episode, and impacts were ultimately very minor.
The load was delayed from its Monday delivery, to say the least. But not very long.
"I delivered Thursday," Dee said. He'd been cleared medically, but Bev rode along to be doubly certain. "When I got to the customer, I got ready to leave and he shook my hand, and he looked at Bev and he said, 'Really, he's had a stroke?' She said, 'Yep.'"
It was one among a very, very few late deliveries for owner-operator Zeeman over his career.
Take it from Tom Darland, owner of Darland Skid-Steer, whose customers are irrigation districts where his company's contracted to pipe the canals in efforts to conserve water.
"One thing about it is you never wait on him," he said of Dee Zeeman and White Pine. "If he says he’ll be here Monday morning, he’ll be out in the yard Sunday night" almost every time.
Darland's routine on a big job is for trucks all to arrive typically 8 a.m., then "we take the trucks to the field to unload," he said. Owner-operator Zeeman is "one of the only ones there early."
Zeeman cut his teeth in a different age -- when late was most definitely late, on-time was late and, well, early was the only way to be on-time, you might say. The approach has served the business well these last eight years trucking in the 2013 KW he purchased with his turn back to trucking with authority.
Zeeman's well set on a plan to retire in roughly three years' time, when his 70th birthday will fall on a Saturday.
"The Friday before I turn 70, I'll walk into the DMV, hand them my chauffeur's license and tell them to give me back my private vehicle license." he said. "I'll be done."
Dee Zeeman, trucking with the full-time back-office support of his business partner and wife of almost four decades, Bev, is Overdrive's Trucker of the Month for August, putting him in the running for the 2026 Trucker of the Year award.
The Zeemans join 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.
[Related: Hotshot trucking to real driver support: Owner-op's second run at small fleet]
Two class acts, and a classic story
You've probably heard the one about the trucker and the waitress who fall in love and ride off into the sunset, right?
No joke, that's basically the story of Dee and Bev Zeeman. Bev was waiting tables at her parent's Broaster Kitchen restaurant in Lethbridge, Alberta, when Dee got his start trucking occasionally cross-border with the old pre-CDL chauffeur's license in the 1980s.
"As a young man, I didn't know what to do with my life," Dee said, thinking back, but his great grandfather had been "one of the original Teamsters" hauling with a horse and wagon. His father was the one who suggested the chauffeur's license.
"Learn to drive a truck until you decide what you want to do," dad said, and Dee found something of a calling in the process.
He was hauling produce at the time as a company driver for the Salt Lake City-based Rappleye fleet, moving loads from California up into Alberta and back. The company had authority, too, Dee said, to "haul swinging beef out of Canada" down through Montana.
Broaster Kitchen was a regular stop.
Bev enjoyed her time there, and a great rapport with customers. "Everybody had been somewhere," she said of the truckers who frequented the place, and she and Dee "weren't far off in age, and we got along real well."
The pair married late in the decade, 1988, Bev movng down to Dee's native Utah to start. His first move toward truck ownership wouldn't come until 1995.
"What inspired me to buy my own truck at first was the simple fact that I got tired of making everybody else rich," as he told it, "trying to make a little more money for myself. It seemed that I was always on the bottom end of the boards when it came to pay."
Husband and wife were proud parents of a one-year-old daughter and had moved to Bev's home country together. "I just wanted to be able to make a little better money for myself and my family," he added.
The truck was an early Peterbilt sloped-hood model, an 1988 377, featuring a mechanical Caterpillar engine with an 18 speed.
The unit and its 62-inch bunk is shown here loaded with pipe on the site of the Utah Sundance ski resort (hence the chairlift above).
Dee leased to a couple different outfits to start, but found true independence would be his path to profit with the 377 -- he got his motor carrier authority and would never run an owned unit leased ever again.
The couple bought the 377 from a farm owner who'd been, let's say, less than diligent about some of the maintenance, according to Bev. Dee was quick to learn lessons he shares with any prospective or new owner-operator.
"One of the things I recommend is to have a bank roll" at start-up that you "don't touch unless it's an emergency," Dee said.
Benchmark it to the cost of the worst thing that can happen for you, mechanically. "When we first started," Dee said, the cost of an engine overhaul could easily run $10K-$15K. "Now it's more like $35K to $45K."
Overdrive 2025 Small Fleet Champ Wes Oberman, speaking in this edition of Overdrive Radio, takes the benchmark farther, adding "six months of living expenses" to it to even more fully insulate the business and family from the unforeseen emergency, he said.
Said Dee Zeeman about his own benchmark: "Have that much sitting there not doing anything in case of a big breakdown. That will break a guy. That will do him in in a heartbeat."
[Related: Just how high has owner-ops' truck-trailer maintenance cost moved?]
Back to biz: DIY cost containment
Among memorable deliveries Dee's made with his current 2013 Kenworth is this flatbed load bound for the windmill site shown.
As the century turned for the Zeemans, it wasn't mechanical failure that marked the end of that first version of their owner-operated business -- rather, life intervened with another child, a son.
The Zeemans chose Dee's native Utah, and "basically parked the truck," Bev said, when they moved back there, Dee securing more-local driving work.
"I hauled for a farm ... outlet store," among other outfits, home nightly, he said. Over that time and other parts of his career he pulled "dry vans, reefers, grain trailers, hopper bottoms, end dumps."
He hauled for a time out of a coal mine in Utah as the kids were growing up, too, he noted, at near 10,000 feet above sea level. "We'd come out of there at 129,000 pounds" assisted by a "pickup with a tug rope to get us on top of the hill," he remembered.
Reliable home time, health insurance for the cuts, scrapes and doc visits for the kids -- nearly two decades of company trucking carried the Zeemans through their son and daughter's growth. In 2018, with both well on their ways forward in life, Bev began getting everything in line in the office to strike out again on their own.
Dee purchased his current 2013 Kenworth W900 used, just beyond half a million miles on the odometer at the time.
The unit was in "really good condition when I picked it up," he said, and issues have been minimal -- routine maintenance items, generally speaking. Hooked to his 48-foot Western flatbed, "we're seeing really good rates" with flatbed freight this year.
Costs just keep rising, too, though. The pair work hard to minimize expense. Bev handles bookkeeping and tax accounting on her own, likewise dispatch and spot load negotiations with brokers when necessary.
Bev's had as many as three other owner-operators relying on her for dispatch, too, over recent years, but is down to just one in addition to Dee, today.
"She takes care of everything," he said, "all the way down. Road taxes, the whole nine yards. She makes sure the insurance is up on the truck and everything. She does it all."
Dee does most of his own mechanicking, another of his No. 1 recommendations for new and prospective owners. "Don’t be afraid to turn a wrench," he said. In some ways, he came by his own aptitude naturally. "My dad was an electrician by trade, and taught me a lot about it.
"I'm not afraid to try."
Build a network around you to learn, he advised, mechanics with experience to lean on when the job gets beyond you.
For the KW, he estimates "right close to 95%" of all the work he's kept in-house, whether himself or with the assistance of one of his sons, now a Cummins-certified diesel mechanic. While the son's not working in trucking today, he's saved dad plenty with assistance through recent years, including at least $700 in one fell swoop "doing the overhead, setting the valves."
Zeeman's not extending basic service intervalsin efforts at cost containment, however. He sticks to a conservative 12K miles for drains. Bev even "get her hands greasy" helping with those oil changes time to time, he added.
[Related: Owner-operators adapt conservative approach to ever-expanding diesel service intervals]
The White Pine '13 KW, Looking great in the dark, too.
Core customer service
All of it adds up where it counts -- the bottom line.
That goes for White Pine's choice of ELD, too. After some years of frustration with electronic logging devices exiting the market or being revoked by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Bev and Dee found the Garmin manufacturer's no-subscription-fee ELD (a onetime ~$250 purchase, paired with a dedicated tablet in Dee's truck).
The Garmin company doesn't play well with third-party integration services like the Highway company's for brokers.
Highway seems to look at White Pine like they're running an ELD-exempt glider, Bev noted, demanding "the title to our truck, our cab cards, our driver’s license" and other documentation to provide automated verification in their core system. The title, in particular, is a step too far for the Zeemans.
Lack a Highway ELD connection hasn't been a dealbreaker on many loads with trusted partners, in any case, Bev noted. The Zeemans place high priority on keeping relationships with shippers, receivers and trusted brokers in good stead, and it shows.
Brian Rye, a carrier sales rep for Standard Logistics, said the Zeemans are his "first call" anytime a roofing materials load headed north through Idaho to Montana pops from a principal Utah plant long-served now by White Pine.
"I talk to them weekly about loads coming up," Rye said. Outside their primary Utah-Montana lane, too. "Never had a problem" on a load run by White Pine, he added. "They're both very good on communication."
Rye wished the Zeemans luck on their run toward the end of this year's Trucker of the Year competition. "I'm glad somebody's recognizing how well they do."
Tom Darland's irrigation-canal efforts see him dealing with 500 truckers in any given year, he said. The Zeemans "are the best of the best" among them, he said.
That why early last summer, when Darland "bought a bunch of lumber at an auction" in Boise for a personal project, he said, Dee Zeeman was his first call for potential pickup. "I hadn’t even seen" the lumber, he said, yet Dee was available.
Darland knew he'd get the job done right. "I trusted Dee to look at it for me before he loaded it."
He offered his highest endorsement for the Zeemans.
"They're just good, honest people," he said, "real truckers."
[Related: South America to Central Florida: Independent builds business for longevity]
Enter your business or nominate an exceptional owner-op you admire to contend for the 2026 Trucker of the Year award via the form on this page. Hear all 2026 contenders' stories so far in their own words via the Overdrive Radio playlist below.
