Page 25 - ATR 1 2013

photography of greer woodruff by John david pittman

“i doN’T liKe always
beiNg oN defeNse;
i waNT To play
offeNse someTime.”

—greer woodruff,
sVp-corporaTe safeTy
aNd securiTy,
J.b. huNT TraNsporT

was an elderly man interested in a house,” Woodruff recalled, but he was
outbid by somebody else. The man was so upset he’d lost the deal, that
“when I took his earnest money back, he pulled a gun on me. Put it between
my eyes. I started yelling for his wife, he stuck it back in his pocket, and I
hit the door running.”
He went back to school, enrolling in graduate school at the University
of Arkansas and earning his MBA. He didn’t have a clear idea of what he
wanted to do with it, but his primary motivation was to stay in north-
west Arkansas where his family was. He looked into a real estate job with
Walmart, and considered Tyson, but decided a job with J.B. Hunt was prob-
ably his best chance at staying – or eventually going back home.
a SafETy aSSIgNmENT
The guy who interviewed him at J.B. Hunt turned out to be Mark
Calcagni, one of his classmates from business school and a former quar-
terback for the Arkansas Razorbacks. And it just so happened the two had
worked on a transportation-related project together.
“Our case study was on a non-union, less-than-truckload carrier in the
early 1980s,” Woodruff recalled. “We evaluated the company and some of
our recommendations included merging with or entering into a partnership
with a railroad to start intermodal freight” which Woodruff observed was
“prior to the advent of intermodal.”
He impressed Calcagni sufficiently to warrant a second interview and
subsequently received a job offer, and on joining the company was enrolled
in its management training program. “The prior management trainees
either went into operations or marketing,” he said. “I was kind of rolling
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arKanSaS truCKing report | issue 1 2013 25