Glen Horack is one of three finalists for the 2021 Owner-Operator of the Year award, produced by the Truckload Carriers Association and Overdrive. The winner, who will receive a $25,000 cash prize, will be announced in March at TCA’s annual convention in Las Vegas. The sponsors of the Driver of the Year Contests are Love’s Travel Stops and Cummins. The other two finalists are Allen and Sandy Smith and Gene Houchin.
Glen Horack (pictured, center) is no stranger to the Owner-Operator of the Year contest -- the four-time finalist is shown here congratulating last year's winner,
Teamwork makes the dream work in more ways than one for four-time Owner-Operator of the Year finalist Glen Horack, who’s been leased with Prime, Inc. consecutively since 1996. Horack and his wife, Karla, based in Elkland, Missouri, have been team driving for 13 years.
Karla joined Glen on the road after the economic downturn in 2008. His business was hit pretty hard that year, and around the same time, the couple’s children were grown and moved out of the house. So, instead of staying home alone, she decided to join Glen on the road.
Horack started driving trucks in 1983 when a friend gave him an opportunity, and he’s stuck with it ever since. He became an owner-operator when he first started at Prime in 1992. He briefly left the company in the mid-90s but returned in 1996 and has been with them ever since.
He views his relationship with Prime likewise as a team effort, and considers the company family. That was never more apparent than in 2021 when Horack suffered a heart attack and underwent a triple-bypass operation, which took him off the road for five months. He said if he had been leased with a company other than Prime, that time off “would have been devastating to my business.”
To help him out, Prime bought his 2017 Peterbilt 579 from him, and that extra cash flow, coupled with an emergency fund the business-savvy Horack had been building, got him through the time off the road.
