Frugality only goes so far after getting used to $4/mile freight, but Jay Hosty's staying choosy

A natural inclination for frugality is a winning quality for most anybody in the world today, and no doubt for an owner-operator. That's one of the central qualities Jay Hosty, our Trucker of the Month for April, put dead center of his now 41-year-long history of success as an owner-operator in trucking. As Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole wrote in our profile of owner-operator Hosty last week, he got his start in trucking as an owner pulling containers around New Orleans, Louisiana, at the young age of 19 in 1981: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-of-the-year/article/15383689/frugality-focus-on-costs-pays-off-for-owneroperator-jay-hosty

Frugality's certainly served him well during the last year and a half’s rising costs, yet it only goes so far after a couple of years' worth of getting used to $4/mile freight. The squeeze is on, coming from both sides of the profit equation.

"it's hard to come back to the reality of $2/mile freight," Hosty said, and thus far in 2023 he's a bit behind in net income where he was this time last year. In part, it's the luxury of being freight-choosy at work there. He's spent more time sitting at the house in Diamondhead, Mississippi, this year, waiting on profitable loads from one of couple of nearby Landstar agents he works with regularly to take him outbound.

Hosty’s been leased to Landstar now for most of the last two decades, pulling today in a 2006 Western Star that replaced a 2000 model, after the truck was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, when he and wife, Katt, were living in Gulfport, Mississippi. They lost their house there, too, with the direct hit, and the comeback from that disaster is made all the more remarkable by the family the Hostys have fostered throughout their entire four decades together.

We’ll hear much more about that in today’s edition, likewise a 2022 Western Star daycab Hosty’s been sitting on for a year with plans to outfit the rig with a custom sleeper built to his needs, as he’d done with the 2000 that Katrina sent to the graveyard. That frugal nature he mentioned has kept him from moving forward with it to date, given pricing he’s gotten from some of the big sleeper manufacturers. For the builders in the audience, he put out a call, too:

"If there's anybody out there who can point me in a good direction of getting a custom sleeper built" without sacrificing an '"arm and a leg" on the build, as it were, he said. "I'm looking to find somebody."

Hosty's Trucker of the Month designation puts him in the running or Overdrive's 2023 Trucker of the Year award. You can enter your own business or put forward another 1-3-truck owner-operator via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/page/toptrucker

Also in the podcast: Heads-up on an online seminar upcoming on Tuesday, May 23, part of a series sponsored by the Bestpass company — it will dive into the topic of work-life balance over the road as an owner-operator, particularly in a down market like the present, and features two men who’ve been in those shoes over the decades. You can register to attend it live at 1 p.m. Central, May 23, via this link.. What we aim to deliver are tactics, strategies to gauge and achieve balance to improve quality of life for yourself -- and/or your operators if you’re managing a small fleet. That's whether you’re a one-truck owner leased to a carrier or with authority, or a small fleet owner hoping to deliver better balance to drivers and, ultimately, to yourself.

The two presenters regular Overdrive Radio listeners have heard here on the podcast before: Innovative Logistics Group founder and managing director Adam Wingfield and Overdrive's 2021 Small Fleet Champ Jason Cowan, founder and leader of Silver Creek Transportation out of Henderson, Kentucky.

Join us: https://randallreilly.zoom.us/webinar/register/2716820986241/WN_h9CP6dZ0QOq-bkpG1spTOw#/registration

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