Page 28 - ATR 3 2012 web 2

He founded J.B. Hunt Transport pany and their industry. He was a great extended Hunt’s reach and comple-
Services in 1969 with his wife and busi- example of American determination.” mented the railway’s hauling capacity.
ness partner Johnelle Hunt, and began “Determination” is a good word Today, the company is the fifth
delivering those rice hulls. The company for what Johnnie Bryan Hunt had in largest freight transportation carrier in
grew, not dramatically at first, but Hunt spades. Hunt recalled working for his the United States, with revenues near-
was always an idea man, always looking uncle at the sawmill where he was sim- ing $4 billion annually.
for ways to capitalize on an opportu- ply given a load of lumber and sent out Intermodal proved a game-changer
nity. When Congress deregulated the to find customers. for J.B. Hunt Transport. According to
industry in 1980, Hunt had the oppor- “He would just load it up and say the company’s 2011 annual report,
tunity he’d been waiting for. ‘this is how much you’ve got on and JBI—the intermodal division—saw rev-
The 1980s were huge for J.B. Hunt this is how much I want, and don’t enue increase nearly 25 percent over the
Transport, which grew more quickly come back without the money,’” Hunt previous year to $2.67 billion, mostly
than any other national truckload car- recalled. “Well, you know, they don’t from a 16 percent jump in load vol-
rier that decade. In a 1999 interview teach stuff down at the university like ume. JBI produces the most revenue of
for Arkansas Trucking Report, after that.” the company’s four segments, and the
Dedicated Contract Services segment
(DCS) was a distant second at $1 bil-
lion in 2011.
Hunt’s penchant for finding good
“it wasN’t about these people beiNg partners wasn’t exercised only in the
self-serViNg, they were just serViNg.” pursuit of success for his own company.
Larger issues loomed that individual
companies couldn’t tackle on their
—steVe williams own, such as legislation from the state
chairmaN & ceo Capitol and Washington, D.C., and
maVerick usa Hunt looked for allies in the industry
to help address them. One way he did
that was through the Arkansas Trucking
Hunt had been tapped as one of the 20 In fact, everything Hunt knew Association, and that was a common
most influential industry figures of the about trucking didn’t come from the trait of leaders like Hunt and Garrison,
century, the company’s founder boiled university, or even high school. Maverick’s Williams said.
down his most important role in that “You know, that’s a great educa- “Their involvement in the associa-
success to one word: Selling. tion: People,” he said. “Just finding out tion was their way of giving back,” said
“I’d say 80 percent of my time was what makes people work.” Williams. “I think the part of those 
in marketing. I really felt like there was Though he once claimed, people who have been active in the
no need for the trucks if we didn’t have “Everything I do is an accident, I don’t associations, who have been instru-
anything to haul in them,” said Hunt. plan anything,” Hunt certainly knew mental in shaping policy and laws in
Hunt would sometimes go with his people—how to work with them, how to this country, have understood that they
marketing staff when they made calls trade with them and how to get along could be as successful as they wanted
on clients and bring his own natural with them. One of his great lessons was to be in their own right, but if they
sales ability into play. When customers “good partners attract good partners,” didn’t go in and shape the minds and
realized they were talking to the boss, and he made sure his best partner—his the attitudes of their peer group in the
Hunt said, that sometimes allowed him wife, Johnelle—was a key component. industry, then they would always be
to walk out with bigger contracts. And She was an equal partner in the com- saddled with all of the negatives that
bigger contracts grow your business. pany and served as its bookkeeper, came along with people doing whatever
That success in the early post-regu- treasurer and corporate secretary on the they wanted to do.
lation period hasn’t escaped those who board of directors. “It wasn’t about these people being
came along in later years. But Hunt also found good partners self-serving,” he said, “they were just
“Mr. Hunt embodied the creativ- outside the trucking business. Seeing serving.”
ity, risk-taking and work ethic that an opportunity to expand the reach of “J.B. Hunt was to trucking what
redefined the trucking industry post- J.B. Hunt Transport, in 1989 he struck Colonel Sanders was to fried chick-
deregulation,” said Williams in a 2007 a deal with the Santa Fe Railway (which en,” said Lane Kidd, president of the
Arkansas Trucking Report interview. “No is today the BNSF Railway) to provide Arkansas Trucking Assocaition. “He
other individual so shaped their com- intermodal transportation. This both became the face of the industry.”

28 aRkansas TRucking RePoRT | issue 3 2012