Archive for May, 2008

Go ahead and call Charlotte Johnson a woman driver. She doesn’t mind a bit. “It’s absolutely OK with me,” Johnson says. “My company has grown from one truck to 15 trucks in two years. We just cleared more than $1 million in gross revenue. People can call me whatever they want!” Johnson isn’t the only woman driving for Family Expediters, the Mogadore, Ohio-based Panther fleet she runs with fellow over-the-road driver Terri Turner. More than half…

When it comes to insurance coverage, owner-operators face more complex choices due to the independent nature of their business. Many factors, ranging from the kind of truck you have to the type of jobs that you do can impact your rates, so finding the proper insurance broker and company to meet your needs could mean the difference between survival and foreclosure. A good insurance agent who specializes in the trucking industry can be a huge help in cutting through the labyrinth of red tape an…

When Bill Donnelly drove out of the parking lot of the Kenworth dealership in Perrysburg, Ohio, his new, long-nose, double-sleeper had five miles on it. Donnelly doesn’t take credit for those miles. He will, however, proudly take the credit for the other 3.75 million miles of smooth running on his 1980 chassis. “If you keep it up, you won’t have problems,” says the veteran driver. “That’s what I’m always saying. If something breaks, it is going to br…

My first experience with trucking began around 1948. My grandfather had an open-bed six-wheel truck with tall wooden sides all around it. I remember him coming into our neighborhood to round up all of the little children, loading us on to that truck and taking us with him for the whole day on any given Saturday. In 1953 my mother moved us from South Carolina to Brooklyn, N.Y. I didn’t care for the city, but I establishe…