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The promise -- and challenges -- of the car-haul trucking niche

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Updated Nov 28, 2021

In today's edition of Overdrive Radio ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, we're taking time to engage with two independent car haulers – Indiana-based owner-operator David Bunting and Ellenwood, Georgia's Eric Turner, owner of small fleet Turner Transport.

Both men have mastered the car-haul niche in spite of current auto-market challenges. Those challenges were the subjects in part of in-depth interviews with each that provided some of the base for Overdrive News Editor Matt Cole's three-part deep dive into car hauling published earlier this month. 

[Related: Turmoil in the auto markets, long-term rates challenges buff some of the shine off car hauling]

Eric Turner, owner of Ellenwood, Georgia-based Turner TransportEric Turner, owner of Ellenwood, Georgia-based Turner TransportThere are plenty in the way of car-haul challenges that exist in a normal time, too, including rates hauled on per-vehicle basis -- that might not fluctuate with fuel appropriately.

There's varying heights of loaded two-level trailers with differing types of vehicles, presenting bridge-strike danger around different parts of the country.

Yet for the self-starting, self-reliant among owner-operators, there’s a reason so many are attracted to the hauling niche -- most car haulers report cumbersome loading processes but with a chief benefit in that you're dependent on nobody but yourself in doing the work most often. Dock personnel do not hold you at their mercy, as it were, unlike in other areas of trucking.