Pete Terres of Munson Feed, Inc., out of Melrose, Minnesota, has worked in the feed business since he started out sweeping floors for his dad there at age 12. Terres is 62 years old today, and sees 20-30 rigs hauling into the operation daily. "A lot of trucking firms don't last very long," Terres said, reflecting on the many he's encountered in his time at the company.
Yet Zimmerman Ag, among his current transportation suppliers bringing in calcium, soda, urea and more to the feed operation, he counts as "right up there with the best," he said. "They do a great job for me."
The fleet's grown to two trucks under the strong hands of two brothers, the elder Daryl Zimmerman (32) and his younger brother Nelson (25), who joined Daryl as co-owner in recent times after leasing on in 2020 when he purchased a truck of his own. Nelson nominated his brother for Overdrive's 2024 Trucker of the Year honor, noting his now decade behind the wheel of a business built from the ground up.
Today, Nelson's following his older brother's approach to continued business expansion, he said with the nomination. "We run the business ourselves and do our own dispatching and finding our own loads through our customer base that we've built up over the years," noting his brother's maintenance prowess, too, as key in Zimmerman Ag's success.
"For my first job" after growing up working with his father farming in Minnesota, "I started working at a truck shop," Daryl noted, before putting that knowledge into practice with Zimmerman Ag. Since he bought his first truck in 2015 to start, "we do all our own maintenance, changing oil, tires, brakes, changing transmissions, tires, rear ends."
Daryl (left) and Nelson Zimmerman of Zimmerman Ag.
"Income has been good the last number of years," said Daryl, even with costs challenges post-COVID "with truck parts, tires and brakes, and when fuel was high there. We’re kind of past that now," and looking ahead to possibly bring on a third truck with another younger brother, he added.
For these and other reasons, Zimmerman Ag and its owner-operator pilots, Daryl and Nelson Zimmerman, are Overdrive's Truckers of the Month for October, making them the 10th and final semi-finalist for the 2024 Trucker of the Year award.
Overdrive's 2024 Trucker of the Year program, sponsored by Commercial Vehicle Group and Bostrom Seating, recognizes clear business acumen and unique or time-honored recipes for success among owner-operators. Truckers of the Month contend for the Trucker of the Year honor, and finalists will be named in December, with a winner crowned early next year. Nominations for 2024 officially closed September 30, yet exceptional owner-operators, whether leased or independent, continue to be sought for the 2025 award. Nominate your business or that of a fellow owner (up to three trucks) via this link. The 2024 winner will walk away with a custom replica of their tractor and a Bostrom seat from Commercial Vehicle Group, among other perks.
Family legacy underscores Zimmerman Ag's expanding customer base
The Zimmerman brothers' father trucked when Daryl was very young from a home base then in northern Indiana, from around 1995 to the year 2000, Daryl said, when his father moved the family to a farm in Central Minnesota. Daryl grew up milking cows and otherwise farming, but the memory of riding with his dad in the truck on trips out of Indiana stayed with him through it all.
After the tremendous learning experience of that first job as a mechanic, in 2015 he attended an auction in Nebraska and for a mere $5,000 purchased a Caterpillar-powered 1991 International 9400 daycab that wasn't quite road-ready. "Turned out it needed an engine," Daryl said, a job he was prepared for. The 1991 unit got him started, ultimately, undergirding the operation through its "first couple of years to get going and on my feet."
His father's trucking past then itself undergirded the business in ways other than just inspiration for Daryl, too. "When I started I didn’t know what to go by" in terms of a name, Daryl said. The very name Zimmerman Ag was what his father's Indiana trucking business had been called, too.
Operating with authority from the get-go, Daryl's never been a company driver, nor leased to anyone -- for freight, he leaned on customers among businesses in some cases associated with his father's farm. His first trailer was an end dump. "Neighboring farmers use washed sand for bedding for the cows," he said. "We hauled a lot of that in the first couple of years. It kept me busy throughout the summer, and then the winter got kind of slow."
Then the feed mill from whom his father purchased feed for his own farm presented a new opportunity. "That's when I bought my hopper bottom," Daryl said. "And we've been going in there ever since," with as many as three-to-five loads a week for the company throughout much of the year. "Normally all the feed ingredients come out of Minneapolis," making for a 2.5-hour haul out with the hopper to load from Zimmerman headquarters, then a similar run loaded on the return for a day's work.
Rates follow fuel prices up and down, generally, for all the ag-related commodities they haul, Daryl noted, with customers attuned fairly well to what it takes to run a trucking business. Among biggest lynchpins of the business's success, he added, has been getting used to the two-way street of fairness and honesty in service to customers: "treating customers the way you want to be treated" when it comes to loads and rates, he said.
Munson Feed's Pete Terres used some of those very words himself in describing the Zimmerman Ag brothers "They’re good guys and honest people, hardworking," he said.
[Related: Bitterman Trucking bounces back to build on long, strong trucking legacy]
Yet it certainly doesn't come naturally for Daryl to see the value in, for instance, taking a load at a less-than-stellar rate when a customer, particularly a new customer where steady business could be the result, needs help on it. "You have to figure out, just dealing with all the customers," he said, that "if they're trying to move a cheap load every now and then, just do it for them, and then the better paying opportunities ... will come along."
That is, if your service meets the challenge, and if the customer is being fair and honest themselves.
Plenty are, though, especially when presented with other sorts of binds, namely the time-honored need-it-now kind. "When they really need the product, there will be a good rate on it" well above and beyond the usual, Daryl said. The Zimmermans don't operate under a longer-term freight contract with their customers.
One among the Zimmermans' two current units, hooked to one of three owned hoppers.
A typical day for either of the Zimmermans on the feed runs might see them leaving at 6 a.m., then back home after unload by 2 p.m., with time left in the day to tend to 70 acres the brothers have rented in recent years for planting as a side business, along with another of their brothers coming up behind them.
"We did corn this year," Nelson said. "Our landlord had beans in it last year. Probably next year, we'll do some rotation, corn and beans half and half."
When we spoke earlier in October, Nelson noted "we're in the middle of that right now, taking the corn out. We get back in the daytime and park the truck and do a little bit of that."
Through the years, too, Zimmerman Ag picked up hopper business hauling "feed commodities to some of the local farms," Nelson said, for livestock. Likewise, with fertizlier co-ops in the area around home base -- Belgrade, Minnesota -- during the Spring.
Some of those loads can be very short indeed, with two roundtrips possible in day, Daryl said. All in all, he noted, "I can probably count on two hands the times I’ve stayed overnight" out on the road "with the hopper."
Pictured here is Daryl Zimmerman's current truck, loading early one morning.
Relying on instincts, proven strategies toward growth
Early on after that initial 2015 truck purchase, Daryl Zimmerman had his sights on growth, and added to his power-unit stable with another daycab, an upgrade replacing his 1991 International. It was a 2007 Kenworth T800. He also purchased a Detroit-powered 2001 International 9400 -- with a 72-inch sleeper -- and another Zimmerman brother was driving for him at the time. The arrangement wouldn't last long, with the brother going on to other pursuits, yet Daryl kept the two trucks, utilizing one as a spare in the event of needed repairs on the other.
Daryl and Nelson are here pictured with that 2001 International, Daryl's daily driver to this day.
Like his brother had done early on, Nelson located a unit at auction a few states away in Ohio -- a likewise Detroit-powered 2001 Peterbilt 379 sleeper. He paid $25,000 for it "when prices were still reasonable," before the huge inflation in parts and used truck prices that followed. He got four years out of the engine before, this Spring, it went to a go-to maintenance partner in nearby Melrose Truck Repair for an overhaul.
The Zimmermans also utilize Melrose for anything needing a computer scan for effective diagnosis, Daryl said, in addition to any major engine work.
As for that Peterbilt, "it's treated me pretty good," Nelson said of the unit thus far.
Nelson Zimmerman's 2001 Peterbilt, hooked to the company's reefer trailer.
In the beginning, Nelson leased to his brother's business. "He owned his truck and he'd pull one of my trailers," Daryl said, noting the company now owns three hoppers, the one end dump, and also a reefer trailer. Accounting for Nelson's loads, with percentage deductions for use of the trailers and the like, Daryl noted, was "a lot of stuff to keep separate" at the end of the day.
Two years ago, the brothers had a meeting of the minds and came up with a dollar figure for Nelson Zimmerman to buy into Zimmerman Ag as 50% partner.
Though restructuring as a partnership came with new initial headaches in business setup, accounting and bookkeeping "got a little easier" in the aftermath, Daryl noted. "Now everything we do is all together with an accounting program," QuickBooks, "for the business. Everything is in one spot" and both brothers have easy access online pretty much wherever they are, to input load information and keep track of everything.
Winter has remained something of a challenge in terms of business, a slow period, yet again Daryl's father's legacy in Northern Indiana has been a boon with broker contacts the elder Zimmerman did business with, hauling reefer freight, during his time trucking. Daryl over the years got to know "some of the guys in the office" at STBI, or Stoltzfus Truck Brokerage, Inc., with a Midwest headquarters in Wakarusa due South of Elkhart, Indiana. "Their rates are usually really good" headed east from Minnesota, Daryl added. "Every now and then they'll have stuff coming back for us," too, and that's often "really good-paying freight."
Semi-finalists for Overdrive's Trucker of the Year program compete for a chance to win a seat from program sponsor Bostrom Seating, among other perks and prizes.
Looking ahead, the Zimmermans have two big projects in the works to prep for further growth, with family at its core:
- A new 50-by-100-foot shop.
- Restoration of the "wrecked a little bit" former sleeper truck the pair recently purchased, a 2000 Peterbilt 379 the Zimmermans have daycabbed and started prepping for paint, Daryl said.
The shop's a nice upgrade to the 45-by-90 dirt-floored shed where they previously did all maintenance and project work. The new shop's a "steel frame building," Daryl noted, and will be "all finished out with concrete, and we want to put a pit in it," a leg up for routine undercarriage inspections. "You tend to catch more problems when you're servicing them that way."
Daryl's also open to expansion into service work for other truckers in the area down the line, too, he said. "Not only on our trucks, but other guys'."
The 2000 project Pete 379, shown behind Nelson's 2001 on the trailer here before the Zimmermans got to work on it.
Getting to work on it.
In the shop, getting prepped for paint.
And farther along ...
As for the project, now-daycab 2000 Pete, as you can gather from the photos above, it remains a work in progress, but there's yet another brother coming up behind them who's expressed some interest in being a part of the Zimmerman Ag biz. "He got his license and wants to start driving," said Daryl. "We’re trying to figure out if we might have enough work for him."
Between the dairy farms, the feed business, fertilizer co-ops, reefer freight and more, it's probably a safe bet they get him there, and you might look for Zimmerman Ag to continue to flourish through the next years -- and well beyond.
[Related: Third-gen owner marshals experience, knowledge, vision to thrive: Trucker of the Month Rene Holguin]
Enter your own or another deserving owner's business (up to 3 trucks) in Overdrive's Trucker of the Year competition via this link. While entries for 2024 have closed, know that any nomination received will be considered for the 2025 award.
Hear interviews with all of this year's Truckers of the Month via the Overdrive Radio playlist below.
