Page 26 - ATR 1 2016 web

Military

Precision

ABF Freight President Tim Thorne finds many parallels
between the Army and the trucking industry

by eric Francis Thorne joined ABF Freight in 1990, after coming out of
Contributing Writer the Army where he had been a captain in the infantry. He
started as a supervisor assistant and then an account manag-
The urge to move is written into Tim Thorne’s DNA. er in Orlando before, in 1993, taking the first of four branch
A self-described military brat, his family relocated fre- manager positions at a small terminal in Florence, Ala. The
quently for his father’s Air Force postings. After college and move came with a pay raise, Thorne said, but there was a hid-
marriage he entered the Army, and his new family spent five den catch.
years moving for his own assignments. He’s a trail runner “They told me what I would be making; what I didn’t
and a mountain biker in his free time. realize is [in Alabama] there’s this thing called state income
Even once he joined ABF Freight, the movement didn’t tax that Florida didn’t have,” he said, chuckling. “I think ABF
cease, whether it was promotions that took him to a new city Freight got a deal on that move.”
every few years or, once he was named president in October Next came a larger terminal in Decatur, Ala. There he
2014, occasionally riding along with drivers. and his wife Diane — herself a military brat growing up — felt
The urge to keep going is not a bad trait for an executive like they’d found something missing from their lives.
in the trucking industry.


“my whole life was military uNtil i decided to
get out of the army. Now i’m takiNg soldiers,
aNd wheN they walk, they go from oNe uNiform
to aNother. that’s pretty good.”

—tim thorNe, presideNt & ceo of aBf freight

Photography by John david Pittman

26 arkansas trucking rePort | issue 1 2016