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asked the waitress as she greeted Keene to accounting. Keene accepted a fleet manager posi-
before taking orders. “Long haul? You That ended when Keene got a look tion in Springdale and he and his wife
still having to deal with my Dad? He’s at the width and depth of his tax text- Jackie, who he met at Tech and married
a mess.” book. in 1982, made the move.
The everybody-knows-everybody At the urging of his advisor, he “We thought we were moving
environment is one of Tyson transporta- opted for a business administration halfway around the world, moving
tions’ strengths, Keene says, and one of degree. to Springdale,” he said. “I was on the
the things he likes about the place. A friend helped Keene make ends phone with customers across the coun-
“They’re all interesting people,” he meet while attending college by get- try and various other truck owners. Just
said. “The truck owners and trucking ting him a job on the shipping dock at all the interesting people that you meet
people are hard working. They’re very Tastee Bird’s Russellville location. Then, in the transportation world along the
strong family people. They want to do when he graduated, Keene was named way. It’s the same today. No two days
the right things.” dock supervisor. Keene filled in for Ray are ever the same.”
Keene grew up in Dover, near Griffin, head of the Tastee Bird traffic But, he was soon assigned back to
Russellville, playing sports and generally department, when Griffin took vaca- Russellville to help manage transporta-
leading a boy’s life. He had the distinc- tion, and upon his return Griffin chose tion from a newly completed distribu-
tion of playing for Dover’s first eighth- to keep Keene in the department with tion center.
grade football team as the school began him. After returning to Springdale in
to build toward a new high school pro- Keene managed a small fleet of 1990 he was named director of trans-
gram. Tastee Bird trucks. But his real educa- portation in 1993.
He graduated and enrolled at tion came from working with other His responsibilities have expanded
Arkansas Tech, though Keene wasn’t trucking companies, which allowed him over the last 19 years. And that experi-
100 percent sure what he wanted to to pick the brains of industry experts ence has changed his approach to man-
do. A flirtation with computer science like Tommy Davidson in Russellville agement.
ended when he saw how much lab time and Shorty Jones, the late founder of “It’s as much about leadership as it
all those punch cards were going to C.C. Jones in North Little Rock. is about management,” Keene said when
take, and after a semester he switched When Tyson purchased Tastee Bird, 

arkansas truCking rePort | issue 1 2012 27