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Trucker Desiree
20 QUESTIONS WITH TODD DILLS
June 2010
Todd's Bio
Todd Dills is Senior Editor with Overdrive and Truckers News magazines, and likewise helps edit and writes for the quarterly Custom Rigs and Severe Service magazines. For daily pieces of the singular, odd, outrageous or outright humorous parts of trucking, read his Channel 19 blog at overdriveonline.com/channel19TP: How long have you been involved with the trucking industry?
Todd Dills: I began my industry adventure -- and it has most certainly been that -- in 2006 when I went to work with Overdrive, Truckers News and, later, Custom Rigs and Severe Service magazines. Other than that, growing up I had a couple owner-operators in my extended family I didn't know very well, and always had an interest in life on the road, really -- did some truncated touring with bands in my late teens, early twenties, then more extensively as a writer touring and doing readings through today.
TP: Do you have a favorite brand or model of truck?
Todd Dills: Can't say that I do, really, as I don't drive. My favorite custom trucks out there tend to have the classic look to them, simple in style, spare of outward window dressing but clearly manicured. A good example might well be Chad Blackwell's cattle-hauling masterpiece - you can see it Here
TP: How did you get involved with Journalism?
Todd Dills: I've been a fiction writer for what feels like forever. After going to college in my South Carolina hometown and getting an English degree, I then did a Masters in fiction writing at Columbia College in Chicago, where along the way I wrote for some of the newspapers and magazines in the city, eventually joining the staff of the newsweekly Chicago Reader, where I proofread, edited copy and wrote several features and book reviews. Things proceeded from there.
TP: How did you get involved with the trucking industry?
Todd Dills: By fortuitous happenstance, really. My wife, Susannah Felts, and I were recently married in Chicago in 2006 and contemplating a move back south (she's from Nashville, my current home base, and like I said I grew up in Carolina). As such, I'd responded to an employment ad from Randall-Reilly Publishing that, if I remember it correctly, was actually about a position with one of their heavy-construction-equipment-focused magazines. The call that came back, though, was from Max Heine, editorial director on the trucking side there. I'd written fairly recently then some historical pieces about particular fire trucks and other emergency vehicles for the Corgi company, which makes die-cast models of antiques, but other than that, my experience with equipment and trucking both was limited to what I've described above. The opportunities for writing about the huge grab-bag amalgam of business, politics and culture, though, including the reality of so many individual people's lives in work, that the trucking magazines represented was of high interest from the word go, and I've been grateful for the opportunity that the last four years with Overdrive and Truckers News have been.
TP: What would you like the trucking community to know about Todd Dills?
Todd Dills: He is motivated by curiosity, a desire to get to the reality of things, above all else, when he covers the industry. Above all else, he enjoys a good piece of writing, a long drive, and generally time well spent with family, friends and strangers, too.
TP: You are Senior Editor for Overdrive Magazine & Truckers News - Tell us your story of how you got there!
Todd Dills: I covered the beginnings of this before. Overdrive and Truckers News were my entry into the industry. I also write for Custom Rigs and edit the Severe Service supplement to Overdrive, both of which came along since I've been on staff with the former two mags. Maybe the biggest development in the work I've done here came in mid-late 2008 when the writer of the Channel 19 humor column, Andy Duncan, moved on to a professorship in Maryland and I took over duties for the column. In expanding the blog associated with it, I found that from that starting point of humor, via the blog, I was able to make direct contact in more meaningful ways with many, many more of the nation's truck drivers than I had to that point. Via the platform of the blog, my "Exit Only" column, typically at the back of Truckers News and in most instances dedicated to the singularly uncommon pursuits of drivers outside of but in most cases in some fashion related to the central business of driving, was launched as well, and my feature writing and reporting feeds into the blog, and vice versa. I've felt pretty good about the connections to readers it's been facilitating since it really got going, and particularly lately with its new home at the revamped Overdrive website. www.overdriveonline.com/channel19
TP: What Trucking trade magazines / websites do your read / visit most?
Todd Dills: Other than those I work for and my Overdrive/Truckers News colleagues' blogs, the many individual drivers on Facebook and Twitter probably, as a group, rank No. 1 here. In no particular order of frequency following them, here are just a few of my favorite venues for information, anecdotes, stories and conversation out there:
- Hotshothauling.com: I came across these forums while reporting a story on the multifaceted hotshot segment of the industry in early 2008, I believe. Quite a good group of folks there, and I've since returned as a lurker often when in need of information on a particular topic. Many ongoing conversations have resulted from the drivers I met there, too.
- TheTruckStar.com/listen: I reported on Daniel Audet's* Truckstar Radio free-form internet-based show in January in Truckers News, and for pure moxie and originality, this show's a favorite. Since my access to satellite radio is limited, I quite frankly miss a good deal of the remainder of trucking radio out there. There are other, similar call-in type shows on the Internet airwaves that have been popping up lately, including the "Let's Truck" show by ATBS Business & Beyond host (and Overdrive Dollars & Sense columnist) Kevin Rutherford. *Daniel Audet was featured in our November 2009 Spotlight interview
- Successfulexpediters.com madsen blog: The "Learning something new every day" blog home of FedEx White Glove owner-operator (with his wife, Diane) Phil Madsen. Excellent operational details in this one, as Phil narrates the minutiae of his business and life on the road, starting each post with something new he learned that day. Quite good stuff here, and Madsen's written in the past for an expediting-focused magazine, I believe. Particularly great, I imagine, for drivers examining the potential of launching an owner-operator business.
- Journal of Commerce online: This one might seem a little outside the bounds of trucking and its drivers, but it's good for the broadest possible view of transportation worldwide, and knowing the global context has proved helpful many times over the last few years in understanding how the industry works, again in a broad context. I believe it was a driver, actually, who turned me onto the site. Can't remember the particularly story he was referencing at the moment, though.
- Ask the Trucker: By drivers, for drivers -- this blog and associated tech-enabled communities was launched by fuel-hauler Allen Smith and his wife, Donna, and from the get-go was a forum for veterans to answer other drivers' questions. It's evolved to include a trucking information/entertainment-aggregating iPhone application called the Trucker, an online radio show called Truth About Trucking" and more.
TP: What can you be found doing when you have downtime?
Todd Dills: I write fiction long and short (had a novel published in 2006 called Sons of the Rapture, religious perhaps only in the manner with which I stuck to a two hour a day in the early morning-type schedule writing it, and in some of the overarching thematic structures; I've got another, as well as a short story collection, long in the works but approaching some sense of completion - if not quite in the execution, at least in conception). I edit a small-run broadsheet and online magazine for short fiction called The2ndHand that I founded in 2000 in Chicago and host and/or help organize associated reading series in Nashville and Chicago, and I'm loving growing up again with my wife and daughter, who's just shy of two years old at this point - we came across a baby snake the other day, and interest was, let's say, intense from all parties. I'm seeing simple things with a new though at once familiar sense of wonder, and that is good.
TP: What is the biggest goal you would like to accomplish?
Todd Dills I've got many of these (finish next novel, build my trucking understanding to a level where a book about the business of driving could be in the cards), but the biggest probably relates to being the best father I can be, generally, which itself particularly probably includes giving up cigarettes, a long-held bad habit that's just so totally irrational it blows my mind to think that I still do it pretty regularly. Check back with me before this runs, though, as I may well have kicked it for good. I've gotten good ideas for drivers, actually, who've quit about how to make it stick, and with any luck those will be well in place by then. . .
TP: Jason's Law - Where do you see progress being made?
Todd Dills: This one is tough to answer from the standpoint of progress in the legislative realm, though the bill's gained some new consponsors in both the House and Senate, I believe, as well as messages of total support from most industry associations. One reason I'm uncertain about its future is that an early-on goal of including boosted funding for parking safety and security in the highway bill has been somewhat waylaid with the highway reauthorization itself continually over the last year, but in terms of activating drivers' connectedness to each other on issues of big importance, it's been a clear instigator. I feel like the rather informal but huge grassroots campaign around Jason's Law, led by drivers as well as Jason Rivenburg's widow Hope in the beginning, has shown the way for drivers and owner-operators -- and their carriers as well, who I think are with them on Jason's Law -- on other issues, laying bare the efficiency of social media in organizing otherwise disparate parties toward real change for the better in the industry. What the future holds for other issues of importance for drivers will be exciting to see; hold onto your hat.
TP: The economy & trucking - what do you see happening?
Todd Dills: Again, tough call. Some drivers/owner-operators and carriers tell me things are looking better in the last several months, but the industry has continued like most others to shed jobs until recently, and in other industries, anecdotally, I continue to hear the horror stories of lost jobs. Companies are hiring again, though. Schneider, for one, announced it would be hiring up to 2,100 drivers in February, so that might be an indication good news is on the way for the many who've lost work over the past couple years.
TP: What is your opinion on CSA2010? What effect do you think it will have on the industry?
Todd Dills: I've reported quite a lot on CSA 2010, and though everybody's situation is different, I do feel like it will mark a significant change industrywide in that it will make the business of driving more a collaboration than a solo activity for everyone, including independent owner-operators. With the inclusion of all violations, rather than just out-of-service violations, in driver safety scores, company drivers and leased owner-operators can expect safety departments reaching out to make sure they do everything with you they can to get that message across, from requiring repeated seminars and such to putting an EOBR in your truck - EOBRs allow carriers to with one stroke eliminate virtually all log currency and form and manner violations, for one. Independent owner-operators, who if they're successful usually have the best, lowest safety scores in the industry, may see their scores go up with the inclusion of "all violations." This may not be the case for an operator who has seldom been inspected at all, and I know there are many. The safety scores for fleets of all sizes are expected to assume greater importance with shippers and brokers in the new liability landscape that has come right along with CSA. For drivers and leased guys, this all may have the effect of better load scheduling and less time spent at the loading dock, if it works out perfectly -- perfection being a big stretch, of course.
TP: In your opinion what is the biggest obstacle truck driver's face today?
Todd Dills: I was tempted here to bring up something regulatory or otherwise having to do with government, but when I think about trucking and huge obstacles the first thing that holds very clear in my mind is the congestion clogging the interstate highways around cities all over America. The explosion of traffic over the last 20 years has been dramatic, and it's made the truck driver's job a more tiring, if not more spectacularly difficult one that it already was.
TP: In your opinion what is the biggest obstacle women truck driver's face?
Todd Dills: As in other traditionally male-dominated professions, women who drive truck long-haul or who want to drive truck long-haul have to break through a certain amount of attitude out there that they just can't do it, which may come in many forms. Essentially, that attitude feeds the more particular difficulties some may experience. All the same, it's encouraging to see the by and large accepting attitudes of the great majority of women drivers' male counterparts out there.
TP: What one thing would you change with the industry if you could?
Todd Dills: This one might seem easy - in an ideal world, we would all make more money, whether per-mile or hourly or in the form of solid shipper customers - though that seeming ease is deceptive. Drilling down below that sort of ideal notion is difficult for me, as in the real world, of course, for every give in one direction there's a take from someplace, and somebody, else. It's my job to see those dynamics. But hey, I guess if I could wave a magic wand over one persistent problem, it'd be the problem of undue detention loading and unloading, which with the way most drivers are paid, by the mile, is a persistent drag on income. Whether the best solution is more detention-pay programs or just perfect - or at least better - shipper scheduling depends on each driver's situation.
TP: What advice would you give new drivers?
Todd Dills: Get a good feel for what life on the road is like, and your prospects for profit and/or a good paycheck, before you commit whole hog to getting a CDL and/or becoming an owner-operator - get the advice of on-highway veterans and less-experienced drivers alike, and don't ignore the advice of experienced fleet personnel, either. Otherwise, run as safe as humanly possible: your record is likely to be ever more important from the get-go as CSA 2010 and the associated pre-employment screening tools become operational.
TP: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Todd Dills: Nashville, the father of a 12-year-old girl, long done with cigarettes, still approaching each day with gusto!
TP: Where do you see the trucking industry in 10 years?
Todd dills One of the big changes already underway that could be the norm for longer-haul drivers in 10 years is being able to get home more regularly. There will always be the possibility of running the road full-time on irregular routes for those who want it, but there's an increasing attention to the way the entire transportation system works at all levels, from the shippers/receivers, brokers and rail and ocean carriers to large-carrier truckers, owner-operators/small-fleets and company drivers and the dispatchers and fleet personnel. Focusing on reliable, regular back-and-forth runs stands to change both the business and culture of long-haul driving, for the betterment of solo drivers' home lives, one hopes. And hey, maybe we'll see that all-electric long-haul truck by then (that may well be farther out, eh)?...
TP: Any favorite memories from your travels and involvement with the industry?
Todd Dills There are many, and most involve last-minute meetings with drivers at truckstops or elsewhere out on the road, truly. Working as a journalist in this day and age, it's pretty easy to do everything expected of you from the comfort - or discomfort, as the case may be (I finally got a new chair a couple weeks ago after months of, well, I won't go into it any further...) - of your home office or whatever other chair/desk you happening to be occupying. The best stuff, however, still comes from in-person witness, I think, and from my own personal perspective, getting out and seeing the rubber where it meets the road is the most enjoyable part of the whole endeavor. Whether it's talking at length about all manner of trucking topics with past Overdrive Trucker of the Year Henry Albert in a hotel restaurant in Dallas during the Great American Trucking Show or the numerous folks I've met up with at the downtown Nashville T/A (and, before in Birmingham, at the Flying J off I-65) at all hours of the day, it's these meets that stand out in my mind above all.
Actually, a chance meeting at a transloading facility in Laredo with Albert stands out as a favorite. I was down there a year ago reporting on the U.S.-Mexican cross-border program and relative freight log-jam there and I just so happened to get a call from Albert the first morning I was there. After we talked for a minute or so, I realized he was just a few miles out I-35 a bit waiting to unload, NAFTA Blvd. or other aptly-named road in the industrial park on the edge of town. In any case, there he was out front when I pulled up 20 minutes later, shirt and tie and all. We walked 'round back and chatted about collectible coins and freight and single tires and the cross-border controversy...
I'll never forget the rest of the day, either, after being stonewalled by a contact with the border patrol and instead meeting with city bridge department personnel, local transport and economic development folks, the president of a Mexican carrier's U.S. operation, a U.S. carrier long ago put out of the drayage business by cheaper Mexican dray operations and now running several trucks long-haul in the U.S.; walking out onto the World Trade Bridge for too long in a blistering sun with a city bridge officer to take pictures of that long, long, long line of northbound trucks; dinner at a Flying J outside of town close to a big intermodal facility, talking to drivers bound for pickup in Laredo... The end of that trip would see me sicker than I've been in a long, long time. (This was right after the time of the beginning of the swine flu outbreak, so who knows?) But at the end of the day, almost too tired to sleep that night, I could feel a sort of pain that's best characterized as that of a job well done, or done as best and as completely as is personally possible. A good feeling to remember.
TP: What's next for Todd Dills?
Todd Dills: A brain (or at least a notes-application) upgrade so that I might increase the number of long-developing stories whose most recent developments I can then hold in my head at any one time. I'm pretty good with notes, but continually accessing files to aid my over-capacity memory (heh) is getting fairly annoying.
More seriously, I'll keep working hard to deliver the reality of trucking developments, and in other matters I've got a fair amount of things in the works (that next novel I was talking about). Looking forward to a trip back to Chicago in May, and to the gulf coast in August with my wife and child and other family. And likewise in August, with any luck, the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas. Hope to see you there.
We want to thank Todd very much for being a part of the Truckerzparadise 20 Questions interviews and above all his excellent job keeping us informed and his passion for the industry we all work in. It is people like Todd that make a huge difference in this industry! Thank you and we wish you continued success with Overdrive & Truckers News as well as in your future endeavors!
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