Owner-operator Angelique “Tornado” Temple's one-truck Tornado Transport business, based out of Beaverdam, Virginia, follows a two-decade-plus career as a company driver hauling liquid-bulk hazmat, much of it spent with Atlantic Bulk Carrier. If her name sounds familiar, it could be for a couple reasons. She sits on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's 2021-established Driver Advisory Subcommittee, for one.
For two, she's the latest inductee in the Howe's Hall of Fame recognizing worthy participants in trucking and farming industries that have supported that company now for more than a century.
Owner-operator Temple's story will no doubt strike a chord with anyone in the audience who’s tried hard to balance a true love of work on the road with pursuits back home -- and the frustrations that come with that work, for that matter. One of those was well evident when Temple picked up the phone for our talk -- behind 25 other rigs in a line to get unloaded at a distribution facility, and the guy at the head of that line had been there for four hours.
That’s right, she’s not hauling bulk hazmat any longer. In 2021, though she was make $130K-plus hauling bulk, she made good on a long-held aspiration to own and operate her own trucking business, purchasing a 2018 International LT and leasing to the CloudTrucks "virtual carrier," whose platform is geared toward maximum owner control of all aspects of the business's operation. (Regular listeners may recall my talk with reps from CloudTrucks, as well as owner-operator Jason Hurley, who’d moved to lease there after years with Schneider.)
There’s more to her plans for the future in addition to eventually getting her authority, too. Her youngest son, one among six children Temple raised over the course of those 20-plus years hauling tank, plans to get his CDL and join her on the road and in business. Dive in with Temple’s trucking history, her training, mentoring, membership on the federal advisory board, charity work and so much more in today's edition of Overdrive Radio. Take a listen:
