"Constantly trying to learn new things just keeps your mind young. It keeps you going. When you stop learning, you kind of just stagnate and drift away." --Owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber
Overdrive Radio listeners will recognize the voice at the top of the podcast this week as that of longtime owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with his 1995 vintage aerodynamic, 4-million-mile Kenworth T600. Every single mile of that 4 million he's put down on the road himself, since the truck was new and he was a company driver for Millis Transfer. Kitzhaber was Overdrive’s Trucker of the Month back in August, when we told the tale of the Kenworth’s journey across the 4-million threshold, likewise the story of Kitzhaber’s long relationship with JR Truck Repair nearby to his home base for a meticulous maintenance approach that has been a big part of the truck’s longevity.
Alan Kitzhaber's 4-million-mile 1995 Kenworth T600 is powered by a Caterpillar 3406e engine he's overhauled well more than once in its 30-year history, as detailed in this 2024 Overdrive Radio edition.
When we got our Trucker of the Year contenders together late in 2024 for a final talk, we asked Kitzhaber and others to draw on their wealth of experience for the best single piece of advice for new and/or aspiring owner-operators. It got Kitzhaber to thinking. He had much more than just one piece of advice. In the aftermath of that talk, he set to work on a story that you can read today on the Overdrive Extra blog in two parts, starting at this link.

Attendant to that in-depth tutorial in business ownership, we’ve also got some big news about Kitzhaber that he's "certainly excited about," he said.
In 2024, possibly his final full year trucking as an independent owner-operator with authority, Alan Kitzhaber with his Oakridge Transport business is Overdrive’s Trucker of the Year.
"I'm going to be retiring the end of March/beginning of April, somewhere in there, and I guess I can't think of a better way to wrap up a career," he said, learning of the honor.
With the win, Trucker of the Year sponsor Bostrom Seating congratulates the owner-operator with a premium seat upgrade worth $2,500. Other prizes include as trophy for a year's reign a custom replica of Kitzhaber's T600 being built by Eston Hoffman as we speak.
Trucker of the Year judges ultimately lauded owner-operator Kitzhaber’s meticulous approach to both maintenance and efficiency throughout the operation. "One of the best and most solid business plans I have ever heard another truck owner operate by," said one.
And another: "I'm not sure I've ever heard of an owner who so maximized the potential of a truck, and who is still wringing every last drop out of it. A smart businessman. Really a monument to the craft of trucking as an owner-operator."
[Related: Meet the finalists for Overdrive's 2024 Trucker of the Year award]
Kitzhaber contracts directly in the distribution network of shipper Menards, with retail stores for building supplies and more throughout the Midwest. Menards transportation manager John Schmidley heaped plenty in the way of praise on Kitzhaber, too:
"Everyone up here at Menards is pretty excited for him," Schmidley said. "He has a lot of respect for the industry, and does his homework." Overdrive's Trucker of the Year award "is going to a real good choice."
Schmidley sees one of the best in Kitzhaber, and relies on him directly as a resource in their business, that’s sure, in addition to offering him as an example to other owners in the company’s big network of independents hauling freight for them. Schmidley was hopeful to convince Kitzhaber to stay in business on a part-time basis for the summer season uptick in transport needs for the shipper, yet the owner is intent on enjoying the fruits of his labor.
"I'm in a position where I just simply don't need to work unless I want to," Kitzhaber said. He's building a house on a 40-acre piece of land he's enjoyed for a couple decades now during downtime hunting, fishing and more for respite from the road.
[Related: Investment diligence over 35 years has Trucker of the Month on profitable path to retirement]
His retirement savings diligence set him up for the journey over his decades in business. We heard about his investment approach in this podcast last year, likewise the long history of efficiency-building upgrades to and meticulous maintenance of his 4-million-mile T600. Today with the announcement of Kitzhaber's Trucker of the Year win, dive into more of just what makes him tick, that instinct he noted in what he said at the top of the story here. He's referencing there a Henry Ford quote that he’s got secured to the visor in the cab of the T600, as pictured in the cover image for the podcast.
The quote: “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”
Says Overdrive Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber, "I try to live by that."
Here’s a big congrats to him from all of us at Overdrive, likewise Trucker of the Year sponsors Bostrom Seating. Here’s to staying youthful even into retirement. Dive into Kitzhaber’s own relative youth, after his time in the military, when early work delivered some plenty learning experiences he would later put to use in business as a truck owner:
[Related: A plan for better business: Why do you want to be an owner-operator?]
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. Through October, we're naming Truckers of the Month to contend for this year's Trucker of the Year honor. Finalists will be named in December, and a winner crowned early next year. Enter your business or that of a fellow owner (up to three trucks) at this link.
Alan Kitzhaber: You know, constantly trying to learn new things just keeps you keeps your mind young. It keeps you going. When you stop learning, you kind of just stagnate and drift away.
Todd Dills: Regular Overdrive Radio listeners will recognize the voice at the top as that of longtime owner-operator Alan Kitzhaber of Eau Claire, Wisconsin with his 1995 vintage aerodynamic 4-million-mile Kenworth T600. Every single mile of which he's put down the road himself since hopping into the truck as a company driver for Millis Transfer when it was brand-new. Kitzhaber was Overdrive's Trucker of the Month back in August when we told the tale of the Kenworth’s journey toward crossing the 4 million mile threshold in the odometer back last May. Likewise, the story of Kitzhaber’s long relationship with JR Truck Repair in nearby Chippewa Falls for a meticulous maintenance approach has been a big part of the truck’s longevity and ultimate efficiency.
When we got our Trucker of the Year contenders together back late in November and early December for a final talk, when I asked Kitzhaber for his best single piece of advice for new and or aspiring truck owner operators, drawing on his wealth of long experience, it got him to thinking. He had more than just a single piece of advice. In the end, he set to work on a story that you can read today in two parts via the Overdrive Extra blog over on overdriveonline.com, published attendant to this podcast as well, where we've got some big news about Kitzhaber to share. I'm certainly excited about it for 2024 and what if current plans come to fruition, will turn out to be his final full year trucking as an independent owner operator with authority. Alan Kitzhaber with his Oak Ridge transport business is Overdrive’s Trucker of the Year.
Alan Kitzhaber: I'm going to be retiring the end of March beginning of April somewhere in there and I guess I can't think of a better way to wrap up a career than being a truck Driver of the Year. That's pretty exciting.
Todd Dills: That's right. Judges ultimately lauded owner operator Kitzhaber’s meticulous approach to both maintenance and efficiency throughout the operation. “One of the best and most solid business plans I’ve ever heard another truck owner operate by,” said one. And another. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of an owner who so maximized the potential of a truck and who is still ringing every last drop out of it. Smart businessman. Really a monument to the craft of trucking as an owner operator.”
Kitzhaber contracts directly in the distribution Network of shipper Menards with retail stores for building supplies and more throughout the Midwest. Menards transportation manager John Schmidley threw plenty in the way of praise Kitzhaber’s way, too.
John Schmidley: “I think it's a great choice. Awesome. It's pretty exciting. Everyone up here at Menards is pretty excited for him. I think it goes to a well deserved driver out there. He has a lot of respect for the industry, does his homework. I think it's going to a real good, real good choice there.
Todd Dills: John Schmidley sees one of the best in Kitzhaber and relies on him directly as a resource in their business. But that's sure, in addition to offering him as an example to other owners in the company's big network of independents hauling freight for them.
John Schmidley: We'll go to him with questions. I mean he does his homework. He treats it like a business. So part of it, you know, when he does his Excel spreadsheets and keeps track of his numbers, you know, a simple thing is keeping track of his fuel mileage. He probably gets the best fuel mileage out there and we just cover the Midwest so it's, you know, he's not going to save too much time. He can be a lot smarter and save time instead of just going faster. So he found that sweet spot with his truck and he watches that fuel and if he has any problem, you know, if it goes a little bit lower, you know, that might throw a sign out there that he has an issue with his truck. But he maps it all out. He keeps track of the tire pressure, everything. does his regular maintenance. I mean he spells it all pretty good. You know, he'll keep an alternator in his truck and he'll be at a truck stop and he can do a quick fix on that himself and be on the road. He loves working with Junior truck there. it's kind of his personal mechanic. So they follow up with him, he follows up with them versus going into maybe a bigger dealership or something like that. And you, you know, you get a team member, you don't get someone at JR that I really think they they want them back next time.
Todd Dills: When I talked to Schmidley, he was quite hopeful he could convince Alan Kitzhaber to stay in business on a part time basis at the least for the summer season uptick in transport needs given the longtime dependability he’s seen with Oak Ridge Transport. When I put that notion to Kitzhaber, here’s how he characterized his plans. Given all he’s put in place to enjoy his final years of life. He’s Building a house on a 48 plus acre piece of land purchased some years back and offering plenty in the way of recreational opportunity for the avid hunter, fisher, sometime taxidermist and photographer and videographer.
Alan Kitzhaber: The summer months is that those are the times of the year that I want to get out on my land and do work and that driving would be a conflict and I financially don'need to work. You know, I put money away and invested and I'm in a position where I just simply don't need to work unless I want to. I do want to work, but I want to work on my land. I want to build house out there and there's just a number of other things that I want to do to enjoy my time out there. I just enjoy being out in the woods, in the wilderness, and the wildlife. Some of the things besides building a house, I want to change the property in ways that will attract more wildlife. I like fish, I like videotaping and photography of wildlife and I just enjoy changing the environment to see what other kind of wildlife I can bring in. And you know, that's kind of my passion. Along with woodworking, I do a little taxidermy as a hobby. so all of those things will take up a great deal of my time and thats what I want to focus on. Thats where my passions are.
Todd Dills: We certainly heard about Kitzhaber’s diligence around retirement savings in the podcast last year. Likewise the long history of efficiency, building upgrades to and meticulous maintenance of his 4 million mile 1995 T600. I’d encourage any owner with a mind to learn from his experience to find links to those podcasts and the show notes for this one. Likewise his two part Overdrive Extra story at ah overdriveonline.comt today we'll dive into a little more of just what makes him tick. That instinct you heard at the very top of the podcast.
Alan Kitzhaber: You know, constantly trying to learn new things just keeps you, keeps your mind young. It keeps you going. When you stop learning, you kind of just stagnate and drift away.
Todd Dills: There he referenced a Henry Ford quote that he's got secured to his visor and the cab the T600 as pictured in the COVID image for the podcast. The quote is anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
Alan Kitzhaber: I try to live by that.
Todd Dills: Here’s a big congrats to Overdrive Trucker of the year Alan Kitzhaber from all of us at Overdrive Likewise Trucker of the Year sponsors Bostrom Seating. Here’s to staying youthful, even into retirement. After the break, we'll dive into Kitshabber's own relative youth after his time in the military delivered some early learning experiences he would later put to use in business as truck owner. Keep tuned.
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Here's Trucker of the Year Alan Kitzhaber diving back into his early working life on the way to trucking.
Alan Kitzhaber: Coming out of high school, I went into the Air Force. I did that for four years. I was in majority of that time was in Grand Forks, North Dakota. I got out after four years and looking for work. I, had a friend, or actually it was my boss, one of my bosses when I was in the Air Force who retired after he had 20 years in. He started ret. managing a retail store in the shopping mall there in town in Grand Forks. And so I visit with him occasionally. And he knew I was getting out and I was looking for work. Didn't have anything specific in mind, but he says, well, I know that the RadioShack store manager is looking for an assistant manager. And so I went and talked to, got hired.
So that was simple enough by itself. And I managed a store. A store there. Well, I started off as a manager trainee, then became a manager. I think it was not a very long period of time, two or three months, something like that. They had two stores in town and the store that I took over, the guy decided he just wanted to get out of the retail business and do something else. I did that for a couple of years, moved to Minneapolis. I was there for a couple of years there. I went to Iowa. I was there for a couple of years, then came back to Minneapolis. I was there for another couple of years and then got a chance to move to Eau Claire and run the store there and workplace politics resulted in me not having a job.
You got to pay attention to the politics of the workplace And I did not, as well as I should have. And so it was not. It was one of those deals. Hey, we don't want you around anymore, but we want to hire you back, but we can't do it right now. So, not a good situation. But then at that time, I'm looking for work, and just I see advertisements for truck driving and see the country and earn a buck.
Todd Dills: You fell victim to the recruiting pitch, but it turned out OK anyway.
Alan Kitzhaber: Yeah, I guess I did. I figured, well, I'll do this for a couple of years and pay some bills, and then I'll get a real job. That was kind of my mindset. Well, that was 34 years ago. Right. and so here we are now and then. Now, the experience with RadioShack, the thing that's unique about that company is that each store is run like a separate business all onto itself. You have a profit and loss statements and expense summaries. So you have to run that. Run it like a business, because you get paid based on the profits. You got a base salary, which is an hourly salary or an hourly wage, and then you got paid a, bonus based on profitability of your store. So you needed to learn how to try and increase sales as much as you could, control expenses as best you could in order to increase profits as much as possible. And that mindset, I simply carried that over into truck driving, which is. It's just a business mindset..
It's no different whether you got one truck or you're a Fortune 500 company. It’s the same principle of running a business, you know?
Todd Dills: You were a company driver for quite some time, though.
Alan Kitzhaber: Yeah, I started in 91 and got into that truck that I'm in right now in 95, and then in 98, which would be seven years later, I bought the truck from them, and I've been driving it ever since. In 2010, I got my own authority.
But other than that, for the last, I guess, 27 years, I've been an owner operator.
Todd Dills: You recommend folks to get that experience on the road before they, in addition to learning as much about business as they possibly can, before they make that move into truck ownership. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your. That seven years when you were a company driver, and you know, how that set you up for, later success, I suppose.
Alan Kitzhaber: You just try and do your job as best you can, I guess. try and be that driver that the company can rely on. one of the things that I did that helped a lot as far as determining whether or not becoming an owner operator was going to be the right thing to do, was I bought a program at the time called TurboTax.
I guess that service is now online. I don't think you can actually buy the program anymore. Where as a company driver making that move to being an owner operator, it' I think a lot easier to do if you do it with the same company because you're familiar with the way that company does business, you're familiar with their customers, and it's a lot easier for you to calculate whether or not that's going to work for you. And I took the pay that I would get paid as an owner operator and I went through and calculated out every single trip that I had run the previous year to see exactly how much I would have got paid based on, the new pay scale. And I plug that into TurboTax and.
Todd Dills: Including estimates of all the expenses that you have to be …
Alan Kitzhaber: The estimate. It's just an estimate. And I did that based on talking with other guys that were owner-operators. Millis Transfer had several owner operators there at the time, so there were plenty of people to talk to as well as the maintenance director there that managed the shop there for Milis Transfer. So I did all of that and put that all together. And it was very helpful because the land that I bought, I didn't buy that until after I became an owner-operator. And most lending companies aren't going to lend money to somebody who just started the business. You know, they want to see two or three years of successful profits within that business before they're gonna give you, any kind of a loan. Well, I explained to the loan officer that the job I was going to be doing as an owner-operator was no different than that as a company driver. And I showed her what the pay scale was and so forth. I had this TurboTax report that I simulated tax returns that I printed out. And that was enough to convince her that I was a good risk. And she granted me the loan. So, that's an example of, I guess understanding and knowing your numbers, as far as profit and loss goes. And a large part of being a RadioShack store manager was learning about profit and loss and understanding how to put all that together and running a spreadsheet. Learning how to run a spreadsheet. That's something I learned when I was with them and that helped immensely as far as building my own profit and loss statement. I can use that for comparing if I want to make a change from one company to the other. It's really easy to have two columns there. The advantage is one versus the other. What part of the country do they run in? You're gonna have to pay tolls. What are the scales going to be like? all those factors you can kind of put into a spreadsheet and it makes the comparison a lot easier because its all side by side.
Todd Dills: Alan Kitzhaber would take inspiration in later years from the exposure he had to small trucking business guru Kevin Rutherford and the pages of Overdrive even to further refine expense and revenue tracking. A story he tells in part in the two parts story he's authored for us and the Overdrive Extra blog with the mind to getting new and aspiring owner operators thinking about the processes that have been crucial to his success. He'd used those spreadsheet comparisons too in his comparison of different operations through the early part of the century. On his way to where he is today 14 years now. Contracted with his own authority pulling freight for shipper Mernards between distribution centers and stores in the Midwest before he moved on from Millis Transfer.
Alan Kitzhaber: The economy went into the toilet in 2009, as most of us remember and Millis Transfer was in the business of trying to create profit and owner operators were the most exp. or the highest paid truck drivers they had. So they were eliminating them. And I was one of the casualties of that. And so then I went on another driver that used to be with them who was actually a guy that I trained me when I started driving truck back in 91 he was working for Transport Designs. So I called and talked to him and asked him, you know, how he liked where he was at and so forth. So he talked to the recruiter there or the personnel manager, whoever it was. And so I talked to him and got on which was really quite fortunate because at that particular time nobody was hiring at all. You make phone call after phone call and nobody was taking anybody on. And so I was fortunate to get on with them. And I stayed there for a couple of years and then the opportunity. I just started searching for other opportunities. What else might I do for a living besides drive a truck? I was thinking about getting into truck sales because of my sales background. But I talked to a couple of guys on that and the income potential at that time just wasn't very good because the market was just, just in the toilet. And so I kept looking and looking and then I found the opportunity with Menards. And they had, from what I understand, they had just recently changed or modified the way that they structured who was going toa haul their freight. They weren't getting the delivery service that they were desiring to have. So they decided to go with one truck, one driver. You own your own truck, you have your own authority, you are your own trucking company. And they went to that particular program. And so far that's been working out quite well for them, because they haven't changed. It's, that's the business model. They'using it all their distribution centers and.
Todd Dills: All those owners are dedicated in the system. They're fully doing that 100% of the time? You don't, you don't actually haul for anybody else, right?
Alan Kitzhaber: I don't and I. You could, that's an option. You certainly could. And there's some guys, maybe they do, but I don't know about it. I think most of them just work strictly for Menards and don't do anything outside of that. They've been able to keep me busy. It's been slow lately, but it's been for a while because the housing, market is kind of a little depressed right now. But I’ve still been able to stay busy enough that I'm not going to complain.
Todd Dills: Net profit for 2024 nonetheless hit six figures even with the challenges he mentions. Likewise, an early year surgery that put him away from the truck for a few weeks. You heard our prior podcast featuring Kitzhaber, though you'll know he's concerned more with efficiency necessarily than the final profit number, as it were. Focusing closely on the comparison between total expenses and profits.
Alan Kitzhaber: The number that I pay the most attention to, when I'm looking at my profit and loss statement is the percent of net income before taxes relative to total expenses. This year it's 48.593% and I shoot for about 50% so I'm pretty darn close right there.
Todd Dills: One of the things that you got into in what you wrote for aspiring and or new owner operators is diet and exercise and kind of a conscious decision that you made. you made the decision to begin a exercise, routine that you've continued to this day with, with the goal of just, you know, putting yourself in a place to be able to actually do what you're doing now. Just enjoy your retirement, get to build your house.
Alan Kitzhaber: I just knew I needed to do something because I was getting pains in my shoulders. And, just a lot of it has to do with just simply sitting on your butt, holding a steering wheel for hours on end. You just don't get the kind of exercise that you might otherwise get. Even if somebody working in an office gets up and moves around a little bit more often than we do, you. I want to work on my land and do things out there. And the way I was feeling, it was like, you know, is this, this not working out? if I want to be able to continue to work on my land and do the things I enjoy doing, I need to do something. And so I got on the Internet and I did some Google searches and I spent a lot of time on YouTub looking at different options as far as, And there are. I tell you what, there is a lot of information on YouTube. There's more people out there offering different exercise programs. And you have time to watch. Some of them are better than others. And trying to figure out which one was going to be best for me was, you know, that was the challenge. What can I do? And you'd have this guy come on and he say, you got to do this every day or you got to do that every day. And that really wasn't real helpful for me. And I tried to gather some common threads between all the different people that I was, watching or listening to or reading about. I kind of started slowly, tried this exercise and that exercise and did different things. And then I ran across a guy named Steve Maxwell. He's a trainer. He had an exercise program or I shouldn't say an exercise program. He owned a gym at one time. The guys of, champion jiu jitsu wrestler, senior classification, I think it was, he's like 70, in his 70s right now. He lives in Washington and he'd been in fitness his entire life. He was a wrler. And when he was younger, in high school, and I, I don't know if he was a wrestler in college or not, or if he even went to college. I don't recall that, but I know he was into wrestling and then he got into Brazilian jiu jitsu. He has a training program or a philosophy called the five Pillars of Human Movement. And it amounts to, you get the five movements, but it amounts to seven exercises. You have a vertical push and pull, in other words, an overhead press or a pull up. You have a horizontal push and pull, which would be a push up or the, what some people call an Australian push up or an inverted Row where you kind of lay on your back and pull yourself up. Then you have core, which would be generally your abdominals. You have hinge, which is like a deadlift working that muscle group. And then you have squat. All of these exercises are what they call compound exercises, which work a varied amount of muscle groups. So it really simplified things to a great extent. And the other thing he had too, he has a bunch of videos that you can get from his website. the one on five pillars of human movement is the one I would recommend. I've got a bunch of them and that would d be the one that I would start with if you're interested. He's also done a video on doing a hotel workout where you're stuck in a hotel room where the guy traveled the world training, doing fitness training. And I says, well, that inspired me. This guy does stuff and he does it all in this tiny little package that he has. He has all the stuff that he needs to do his workout and this little pouch that he carries with him. And it's no more, not any bigger than a shaving pouch. I was inspired by that and I said, well wait a minute, maybe I can do something inside my truck. I can do it year round, doesn't matter what the weather is. Hot, cold, raining, snow, freezing. I can do it in my truck. It may not be as good a workout as you could get otherwise where you have more room to work, but it's better than nothing. And so I devised seven exercises that would work for me that would work those muscle groups. I've got the pull up bar in my truck. I have some exercise tubes, from GoFit I think is the brand name. I was able to do all those exercises in my truck. I do the same exercises at home. In fact, I just did an exercise or workout this morning before I got on to talk with you this morning.
Todd Dills: And do you do this every day?
Alan Kitzhaber: No, I do it about twice a week. It's all it's necessary. You don't. And it takes about 20 minutes. At the same time I started the fitness program, I also paid a little bit more attention to my diet and health as far as that goes. So it's kind of a combination of things. not that I was grossly overweight or anything like that, but there was room for improvement. It's made a big, big difference in how I feel. I don't have those aches and pains in my joints anymore. it makes a heck of a big difference. Just it's the mindset is I wanted to do functional fitness is the objective. I wasn't so concerned about training for some kind of athletic, competition or anything like that. Just wanted to do enough that I, could strengthen my muscles in all areas of my body to the point.
It was gonna benefit me, where I wasn'tn to get, atrophy, which I think a lot of people end up suffering just by. I see so many truck drivers have a hard time just getting in out of their truck when they start to get old. It. The guys that are doing flatbed work and they're in and out of their truck every day, all day long, they probably are getting enough exercise that they may not need to do any kind of anything special. But there's an awful lot of people that I think developing some kind of an exercise program would help them a great deal. and then the other thing like doing push ups or doing like for core workout, I do a, kind of a crunch, sit up kind of exercise or I have. What I did is I took a piece of plywood that is 6ft long by 26 inches wide. And it was that size because that's the size of the exercise. Or it's a yoga mat that I put on top of that. And then, I wrap a strap around it and I can stick my feet underneath of it and I can do exercises that way, you know, as far as crunches. And then the other exercise that I do for the hinge exercise, I stick my feet underneath or get on my knees, wrap that strap across my ankles, and then I lean forward and then back. And that posterior muscle chain gets worked really well there, especially in the lower back, which is an area that I feel that I need some attention to because, my lower back bothers me a little bit from time to time. And I think that's true for probably most people who drive truck. Common complaint. I think it's just a lot of inactivity. Now when I had my prostate surgery, one of the things that I did is I walked every day. I'd walk five to 10 miles every day for almost the entire two months that I was. Well, not initially. I didn't, I didn't walk very far for the first few days, but it wasn't too long and I was walking five miles a day. And when I went back to work, my back felt great. No issues at all. I mean it felt like it should. And I'm going, gosh dang it. Should I retire now? I was really tempted to retire because just because I felt so much better now that I got back to work again. Now my lower back is bothering me just a little bit. But the exercise that I've done, I've modified the exercise from what I was doing to what I am doing now. And that has helped. But the beauty about this whole program is you'got seven exercises too. You pick one exercise that you can do and everybody is at a different level of fitness and can do a certain amount. Like for example, push ups. You know, if you've not. I hit the first time I did a push up, I hadn't done one since high school. It was painful. It was. I couldn't believe I hadn't tried one for 30, 40 years. It was actually painful because your muscles were just not accustomed to it. And it'll take time if you are going to. If someone who is listening to this is go goingna do the same thing I did, it'snna take some time. It probably took, I would say, for some of those aches and pains to go away. It probably took close to two years. You just start out and I'm at the point now where, you know, you start out with a particular exercise like a push up and you can only do so many. You maybe can only do them from your knees to your hands. You might not be able to do them from your toes to your hands because you're too know you're not strong enough yet. so you have to kind of work your way up from whatever you can do now and just keep working and working and working and you'll eventually get to a point where you just can't do anything more than what you're doing. You're getting it as difficult as what you can handle. And that'kind of where I'm at right now.
Todd Dills: From there, as Kitzhaber suggests, you maintain as best you can, just as you would with your truck. Long term you’ll be in better health and better able to enjoy the fruits of your labor which this trucker the year is determined to do on that 40 acres worth of property in the years to come. Here’s a big congrats to Kitzhaber for the win to all of our 10 semi finalist truckers of the month last year. Keep tuned to overdriveonline.com for an opportunity to meet Ellen Kitsawr at the Big Bit America trucking show in Louisville in March where we well present him with a trophy for this years's award, a custom designed replica of the 4 million mile T600. Who knows but that you could get an opportunity to see the real thing for yourself as well with all of its efficiency minded modifications.