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Owner-operator Mike Crawford in this week's Overdrive Radio expands on some of the themes showcased earlier this week in our special-edition podcast in part about the ongoing safety utility, and the decreased cultural importance, of the CB in trucking. If you missed that 60th-anniversary podcast earlier this week and attendant coverage, visit http://OverdriveOnline.com/trucking-history access it. We wanted to bring Crawford back in here because what you heard for him via that special edition was just a very sliver of our longer conversation – the talk was centered on the CB and his history, how he went from being the Lucky Turkey to the Maverick for a time to what he's known pretty much universally as today. Listen on ... Crawford's an independent with his authority now for many years but running mostly with a single broker – Prime’s logistics group, after having leased there for many years. He was Trucker of the Year back in 2010 in the Overdrive program of that time. Read more about Crawford via this link to past coverage: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4381542 Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: http://overdriveonline.com

This special edition Overdrive Radio is part of our celebration 60 years since the magazine's founding in 1961 -- as such, every Monday we’re looking back on various elements of the trucking business and culture as they’ve existed in the past and evolved on up through today via http://overdriveonline.com/trucking-history For this episode, we’re looking at the CB radio, both in the context of safety and trucking culture. First, we run back through the first in my Channel One Nine series of mini-episodes produced in collaboration with PRX’s Radiotopia last year – that episode was devoted to CB handles and the history of the CB in trucking in brief. Following that is a variety of reader views from 2017, after a disastrous late-night winter pileup on I-80 in Pennsylvania, around the importance of using the CB in dangerous conditions to avoid such events -– this time of year, as is particularly in evidence this year, such sentiment is, as they say, timeless. Hear more from the Radiotopia podcast network, including Over the Road, via http://radiotopia.fm Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: http://overdriveonline.com

For today’s episode of the Overdrive Radio podcast, brace for a long run through the history of trucking with former household-goods-hauling owner-operator Finn Murphy, also a well-versed student of that history. Murphy is interviewed and much of the story is narrated by Overdrive contributing writer and reefer hauler "Long Haul Paul" Marhoefer. This brief history of trucking in America tracks the rise of the business from the 1920s up through today -– and the owner-operator's central role in it all. It was originally part of the Over the Road podcast series, Overdrive's 2020 coproduction with PRX's Radiotopia We’ll hear form a past wildcatter about, among other thing, the Allis Chalmers "Purple People Eater" engine in one of his trucks; from Murphy about his post-deregulation career, made possible in part by the 1980 Motor Carrier Act’s removal of barriers to entry that kept many new ventures out of non-agricultural freight markets; and about the rise of the Teamsters in regulated markets from the 1930s on. If you missed the original airing -- it'd be unsurprising, as it aired originally smack dab in the center of the initial surge of COVID-19 cases late last March that kept the entire nation on edge -- you're in for a treat. Also in the podcast, another special piece of history in Ohio-based Fred Bowerman's preservation of this 1978 Peterbilt 352, pictured during "That's a Big 10-4 on D.C." on the National Mall this past year, an event Bowerman's helped to organize three years running. Find a distillation of owner-operator via this link to Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills' "Breaking Free" history, written attendant to Overdrive's 2011 50th anniversary: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/14876086/breaking-free-owner-operator-history-upon-overdrives-50th-anniversary A special series highlighting elements of Overdrive's and trucking's history attendant to our ongoing 60th-anniversay year is available via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4406897 Hear more from the Over the Road podcast editions: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4405867 Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: http://overdriveonline.com

What was the first recorded trucking song? According to Todd Uhlman, an assistant professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio, “Wreck on the Mountain Road,” recorded by the Red Fox Chasers in 1928, may well have set the stage for many such songs to come. Such trivia is only a small part of what Uhlman academic specialty has uncovered -- he places trucking songs in the context of U.S. socio-cultural history, explaining how each song reflects something of the trucking industry and culture at the time of its release. This year, as Overdrive shares pieces of trucking history in weekly installments attendant to our 60th anniversary celebration, we’ll hear more from Uhlman in this new "Songs of the Highway" podcast series of shorts from Overdrive Radio, about a variety of important trucking songs -- some familiar, some not. The Chasers’ song “tells the real-life story of a trucker named Lonnie Brown who died in an accident on Bent Mountain in Southwest Virginia,” Uhlman wrote in the journal. The song followed a similar one about a newsmaking 1903 train wreck at Stillhouse Trestle in Virginia. Listen to learn more about the historic “Wreck on the Mountain Road,” including a few clips from it, and thoughts about truckers’ interest in the prospects of dying on the job. Find links to the entire song, likewise the Chasers' record “I'm Going Down to North Carolina: The Complete Recordings of the Red Fox Chasers (1928-1931)" via this link to our coverage at Overdrive: http://overdriveonline.com/14898500 Follow this link for more in our weekly 60th-anniversary series probing the history of Overdrive and trucking: https://www.overdriveonline.com/t/4406897 Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: http://overdriveonline.com

In this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Chief Patrol Agent for the Laredo, Texas, sector Matthew Hudak has a message for the trucking community about what he’s seeing in the numbers since October 2020 when it comes to busted human smuggling operations. There's been a dramatic uptick in instances of drivers moving strange cargo in their dry van or reefer trailers -- actual human beings. In some cases, the drivers involved may have been initially hookwinked into participation in the schemes, though the red flags are what they are, and should be easy to spot for anyone recruited by a smuggling ring for the purpose. For the entirety of fiscal year 2020, ending September 30, Chief Hudak said 1,400 people were caught being smuggled in tractor-trailers. Since October, in just a short three and a half months, 51 separate busts involved more than 1,600 people, a sizable increase in real numbers, in just a fourth of the time. The image associated with this week's episode is from the border patrol’s X-Ray imaging technology, which helped discover a bust that led to a driver’s arrest just as the new year turned a couple weeks ago. The motivating factor in that case? Well, the driver told police he was to be paid $10,000 for the load, which had planned to move from Laredo to San Antonio. If you’re not from or familiar with South Texas, that’s about a 150-mile trip. Yet the price this driver will pay is going to be no doubt steeper than that windfall. The man may never haul again, as you’ll hear through the course of this talk with the chief. Subscribe to Overdrive's newsletter for daily updates five days a week: http://overdriveonline.com

How often has Berman had an owner-operator request to review a freight transaction record under 371.3? Very rarely, and when it happens, his company requires an in-person review in an effort to control the information as much as possible to satisfy shipper nondisclosure demands. More on broker evaluating and vetting, too, in this edition of Overdrive Radio.

Listen: As the crisis of the last two months has done so much to expose bad actors among brokerages and spur a push for market fairness, Part 1 of the views from a longtime broker (and onetime former owner-operator), East Coast Transport's Paul Berman, in trucking since the 1970s.

Ed Miller's “A Trucker’s Tale” memoir is a well-crafted, intimate portrait of a life lived in trucking, from Miller's time as a kid in Western North Carolina changing tires for his family's trucking company '50s and early '60s, to the driver’s seat himself stateside and in Vietnam as a Navy Seabee and more -- 60 years' worth all told. Also, more views on split-sleeper changes from readers.