Mike's Book Club: JB Hunt The Long Haul to Success

Checz Fracios a world renowned french restaurant in Vermillion, Ohio I used to do some of the carpet and tile work there for a broker they grow there own herbs and things behind there restaurant. I think they get a lot of there stuff from Blue Ribbon Meats in Cleveland which is a specialty meat company there just a straight truck outfit and there produce who knows they might go to the farmers market and buy it them selves. Real fancy places like that, use real small time specialty places.

The mom and pops that are feeding the masses or places that are more for the common people those are the places more casual joints that buy everything off the truck and get deliveries between 65-100 cases.

 

Must have been one of the first J.B. Hunt drivers.

Which brings us to J.B. Hunt:
Chapter 5 Operations

Actually Mr. Hunt didn't care at all for dark 1970s trucker culture didn't care for it one iota bean and actually was one of the main reasons the company was so successful. None of these big serious companies Schneider, J.B. Hunt and Werner cared for any of that, the late 1970s and 1980s change was very much on the horizon.

The LTL Companies in my wording became much more corporate way before the big truck load carriers. The LTL companies had unformed drivers and fleets hell CF had a safety department that was pretty serious about stuff, and the LTL companies dealt with big shippers because the big shippers needed reliable systems which companies like CF had.

J.B. Hunt from an operations stand point really put together the first major corporate uniformed truck fleet.

J.B. Hunt drivers back in the day all wore uniforms it was a company rule. I guess back in the 1970s in Lowell, Arkansas the trucking division of the company was not making money and J.B. Hunt saw some fella who looked like the guy in this picture:

climb into a tractor and drive away. One of there newer tractors at that. Mr. Hunt decided that was enough and "closed the gates and shut it all down."

He told everyone no more until everyone gets cleaned up and we get some uniforms in here.

After that, day once Mr. Hunt went over to uniforms "the trucking division always made money."

Now a manager at the Lowell terminal back in the day said that, story about shutting the gates and shutting it down was all highly embellished yes, Mr. Hunt didn't care for what he saw and wanted change, but that manager said "I don't actually recall us ever closing the terminal gates and barring people from leaving the yard that particular day."

Anyhow, Hunt and his crew set up a driver training school and instituted uniforms. Hunt used to personally talk to all the students in the class room back in the 1980s. He would ask them questions and they would answer,his questions were questions about there lives how many of them were broke and how many of them weren't stuff like that. Hunt always told the students in his class that if they were broke this is the best seat they could be sitting in.

What J.B. Hunt did was corpratize if you will trucking. Before it was just small companies and owner operators and freight brokers and a bunch of shade balls. That's all good for shady business, but big time companies that was no longer acceptable. Like I said the economy was growing, industry and the country were changing as someone else on here said in my post about John Mellencamps Song Blood on the ScareCrow it was the 1980's and it was now go big or go home.

In 1977 PepsiCo bought Pizza Hut and decided to put Pizza Hut on the map. In 1978 Pepsi Bought Out Taco Bell and Then 1986 bought out KFC and started the entire Pepsi Food Systems dynasty. That lasted until 1997 when they got out of the restaurant business and sold Pepsi Food Systems to AmeriServe which essentially became modern day McLane Food Service.

MBM updated there fleet in the 1980s to modern day 48' trailers to serve chain restaurants.

Companies like Kraft and Sara Lee started buying out small time broad line food distributors and focusing on restaurant sales and service. And laying the ground work for companies that would become Sysco and US Foods.

J.B. Hunt Company introduced company uniforms, technology for load tracking. Standardized truck and trailer fleets and standardized maintenance practices. J.B. Hunt said you rarely ever see a J.B. Hunt truck broken down and it's true I can't personally say I've ever seen to many J.B. Hunt trucks on the side of the road.

They ran a tight ship at J.B. Hunt still do. High Quality reliable big service to meet the needs of the biggest shippers.

J.B. Hunt used like everyone owner operators in the early 1980s but with fuel and mixed truck fleets they decided there was a better way and J.B. Hunt was a small struggling company in 1980, but they went to Navistar who was also having troubles and partnered with them and they bought the Navistar International 9700 cab over the "bus" they said that truck to them had the best turning radius and sight lines.

There mixed fleet of owner operators got 4.5 miles per gallon. There standardized fleet of "bus" 9700 Internationals got 7.0 miles per gallon. Also the company had newer trucks and newer motors better millage and pulling capability they said you never saw black smoke coming out of a J.B. Hunt truck.

 

So actually we only have 3 chapters on J.B. Hunt left.

What do you guys want to do next Werner or Old Domino Freight Line?