Page 26 - ATR 2 2014 web

Ala., headquarters. its issues impact his employer, which the bigger retail mission we have.”
“I loved it,” he said. “I was the first ships a huge amount of freight every And the overall corporate mission,
manager trainee Poole Truck Lines ever year through its private fleet, for-hire the one that you see displayed promi-
had, and pretty much worked every area carriers and intermodal. nently along walls at Walmart’s trans-
in the company for a time. I learned But the more things change, as portation headquarters in Bentonville,
what happens in a trucking company.” they say…. infuses everything Rosser does. “To help
Dispatch, customer service, opera- “It’s still a people business,” Rosser save people money so they can live bet-
tions, sales – he served the full tour. said. “At the end of the day, people make ter,” he said. “It’s not just a tagline we
“The thing that made me fall in things happen, people get things done. put on the wall. Operating efficiency is
love with the trucking industry, it was a We’re very reliant upon our truck driv- paramount. We take those savings and
portal or conduit to every other indus- ers, our shop associates, to make sure we invest back in price.”
try,” said Rosser. “If you were going to are operating safely and have the best Naturally, technology plays a big
service a customer, you had to under- equipment. The mission of picking up part in that, and changes in technology
stand how their business functioned, and delivering freight in a timely man- are moving at a steady clip.
what their needs were. I got to learn ner and safe manner is very similar. It “When I started in transportation
about the chemical industry, the paper was an easy transition, relative to that.” at Walmart, we were still dispatching
industry, the retail industry. That was Especially compared to his last job off index cards,” he said. “We were

“at the eNd of the day we talk about techNology
aNd regulatory issues aNd thiNgs relatiVe to moViNg
products from a to b. but it takes people to get thiNgs
doNe, aNd i doN’t thiNk we caN eVer forget that.”

intriguing.” before Walmart. using paper clips and pink index cards
Today all of that experience “Jeff Hammonds, who I’d worked and green index cards to dispatch our
remains highly relevant in his position with at Poole, was at Walmart and so I drivers and attach backhauls to loads. It
as senior vice president of transporta- connected with Jeff after probably nine or was pretty manual, so we’re much more
tion and supply chain for Walmart ten years,” he said. “I came in and inter- automated now.”
Transportation, where Rosser oversees a viewed with Walmart and was scared to Sophisticated routing technology
fleet of some 6,000 tractors, more than death. Because, at the time, it was a $90 integrates with the cabs to help the
50,000 trailers and – “most important- billion company and the largest company drivers make trips in the fewest possible
ly,” he insists – more than 7,500 driv- I’d ever worked for was probably $180 miles. Walmart was an early adopter
ers and shop associates who keep the million. They probably did more sales in of electronic on-board logging systems,
goods moving and the fleet running. a day than we did in a year.” Rosser said, thanks to one of his pre-
In some ways, though, Rosser is But Rosser loved what he saw in the decessors – and with thanks from the
actually a bit new to trucking. Despite corporate culture and how things hap- folks hauling the goods.
his nine years in the industry and step- pened at Walmart, and so he accepted “I tell you, our drivers love it; if you
ping into Walmart’s private fleet opera- the opportunity before him. The biggest asked them to go back to paper logs they
tions when he first joined the company difference, he said, was moving from would probably revolt,” he said.
almost 18 years ago, he has been in and “running a trucking organization to But technology advances can also
out of transportation during his career being a transportation organization that complicate things. Take, for instance,
with the retailer. For six years before is supporting the framework of a retail the advent of e-commerce. When Rosser
attaining his current position, he was organization.” stepped away from transportation back
on the retail side running stores as a “That’s vastly different,” said in 2007, there was no such thing as
regional manager and executive. So he’s Rosser. “You view it through a differ- an iPad; when he came back in 2013,
used the past year and a half to bone up ent lens. We call it hauling freight like tablets (and smart phones) meant your
on the changes in the industry and how a merchant, because we are supporting storefront was anywhere your customer

26 aRkaNSaS tRuckiNg RepoRt | issue 2 2014