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“he has credibiliTy wiTh safeTy groups, wiTh The doT aNd wiTh The
compaNies ThaT maKe elecTroNic loggiNg deVices. he was acTiVely
eNgaged iN worKiNg wiTh Them To Keep eVerybody oN The same page. i’m
NoT sure we would haVe beeN successful wiThouT him.”

—laNe Kidd, presideNT, arKaNsas TrucKiNg associaTioN

the dice. If I got selected for market- carrier to become the second truckload pany could generate.
ing I would probably stay in northwest carrier by 1987. Hunt started a program in Lowell
Arkansas, in operations I’d have to There was only one problem with for entry-level drivers, which “gave us
move.” all this growth, and it was squarely in another avenue to meet the tremen-
As it turns out, he went into nei- Woodruff’s field. The company couldn’t dous growth we were experiencing.”
ther. “I was asked to take over the find enough drivers to operate its That included a major legislative feat
responsibilities of the driver training trucks. “It was monumental growth in when the Arkansas General Assembly
department, to be a manager of driver those days, and to find that many quali- appropriated more than $500,000 to
personnel.” fied, safe drivers was a big challenge,” build the Commercial Driver Training
Up to this time, all J.B. Hunt’s said Woodruff. Institute on the Newport campus of
driver recruiting had been done out of So the company did things its com- Arkansas State University.
its terminals around the country. The petitors weren’t doing. It improved the “Greer helped us persuade legisla-
individual safety departments did their driver comforts at its terminals, equip- tors that the trucking industry was one
own advertising, qualifying and orient- ping them with showers, lounges, laun- of the few real job creators in Arkansas
ing. Woodruff’s job was to centralize dry services and lunch rooms. Truckload and the state would do well to encour-
those functions in the interest of cost carriers were known for keeping drivers age its growth by funding a first-class
control and efficiency. But he was also on the road for weeks at a time so Hunt training center,” recalled Lane Kidd,
treading on the turf of folks with a lot tried shortening those travel times away president of the Arkansas Trucking
more seniority. from home. And most importantly, the Association (ATA).
“Part of the challenge at the time company increased pay far beyond what Woodruff expanded the company’s
was that I was only 25 years old, had no its competitors were paying. reach to other schools around the coun-
experience in the trucking industry, and The company also opened up a try. “We would perform the recruit- 
really no management experience,” he driving school in Lowell in 1988, offer- ing and placement, and the schools
said, “and we were, in some ways, kind ing its students free tuition and a job would train people to our standards,”
of wrestling this away from the more guaranteed upon graduation. Woodruff Woodruff said. “Then we closed our
seasoned safety managers who had been was directing many of the changes. He school in Lowell and opened schools in
performing these duties. helped streamline the driver application Alexandra, La., at the former England
“Here’s a 25-year-old kid coming in processes. “We had paper applications Air Force Base and the former Chanute
and taking away something they’d been and telephones,” he said, sounding a Air Force Base in Rantoul, Ill.
doing,” he observed. “It was a challenge note of disbelief at the thought. “People “We would occupy the site, lease
to help them understand what we were would call to ask about the status of dorms and training rooms, and often
doing and why; that it was going to be their application with us and we didn’t times parts of the air strip or aprons
good for the company’s safety perfor- even have a computer to track it and where we could operate the trucks and
mance.” know who had it, and if we wanted to have a truck driving range,” he said.
Woodruff didn’t wait around for approve or deny them.” “Those were interesting times; those
them to get comfortable with his ideas. But perhaps his biggest challenge were difficult contract negotiations.”
He didn’t have time. In the late 1980s, in those hot-growth years, he said, The effort, though, paid off. The
J.B. Hunt Transport was growing faster was helping the company improve the company schools turned out 2,500 driv-
than any trucking company in the quality of its driver training. Without ers a year and the contracted schools
United States. Having gone public in adequate training, the increased liability another 2,000 to 2,500. And for years
1983, J.B. Hunt personally guided a costs associated with accidents could those programs helped produce drivers
sales team that catapulted the truckload quickly evaporate any profit the com- who met J.B. Hunt’s standards, as well

26 arKanSaS truCKing report | issue 1 2013