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of

Safety

J.B. Hunt’s Greer Woodruff is all about making
trucking safer for everyone

by eric francis
Contributing Writer

There’s a certain well-worn image the American public associates with
truck drivers. Cowboys of the road, rough-and-tumble guys who push them-
selves (and the traffic laws) to the limit to get their loads to their destina-
tions, maybe popping those little white pills Dave Dudley sang about in “Six
Days on the Road” to make sure they deliver the goods on time.
As J.B. Hunt Transport’s senior vice president of corporate safety and
security, Greer Woodruff knows that perception no longer has much basis
in reality. At worst, it’s bad not just for his employer but everyone in trans-
portation. And that’s why he’s been working for years to raise the bar for
who can qualify to be a truck driver. But he’s also working to bring about
new regulations on the industry, itself, that will make trucking safer, more
efficient and perhaps help erase that anachronistic idea of who’s piloting the
18-wheeler in the next lane.
“We have an obligation to share the roads with the public in a safe and
responsible manner,” said Woodruff, a tall, guy with close-cropped blonde
hair and beard who looks younger than his 50 years. “Our families are out
there, as well, and the good drivers deserve to have their reputation pro-
tected and enhanced.”

STarINg doWN a gUN BarrEl
In 1986 Woodruff was doing pretty well for a 23-year-old. He had a
degree in finance and real estate from the University of Arkansas, and his
first year as a Realtor had been a successful one for him. But the local mar-
ket was primarily residential, so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to get into
the more lucrative commercial deals. And he had begun thinking about
whether this was the right career for him.
“I had a few things happen that caused me to question if I wanted to be
in that business,” said Woodruff, sitting in his extremely modest office at
J.B. Hunt’s headquarters in Lowell. “I felt like integrity was an issue. I had
a few cases where things weren’t really done as ethically as I thought they
should have been. I didn’t want my reputation caught up in that.”
But the thing that pushed him past his limit was something that went
beyond unethical behavior, a surreal experience he’ll never forget. “There

24 arKanSaS truCKing report | issue 1 2013