Page 26 - ATR 4 2014 web

PAM Gets their MAn

CEO Dan Cushman talks turnaround in Northwest Arkansas

by Jim harris
Contributing Writer

When he first arrived five years ago, Dan Cushman couldn’t
help but notice the lack of buzz around the operations room at PAM
Transportation Services Inc. He likened the quietness to a library.
“And then, I looked up on the wall there in the back. These flags
hung up there high, flags of trucking companies that PAM had bought,”
Cushman recalled. “My first thought was, ‘Who are we? What are we
trying to be?’”
Cushman, who took over as chief executive officer of the Arkansas-
based trucking firm in 2009 with the company bleeding red ink, set out
to define just what this “PTSI” and all its subsidiary trucking holdings
were.
Five years later, with an ear-to-ear grin that makes his 6-foot-6
frame far less imposing than it could be, the affable Cushman proudly
says, “We’re PAM Transport. That’s who we are, PAM Transport.”
PAM currently ranks as the 60 largest trucking firm in the
th
country.
“We may not be the biggest at what we do,” he said, “but I can say
with confidence we’re as good as anybody in the industry.”
Though the NASDAQ stock ticker may refer to the company as PTSI,
Cushman says, “Call us PAM,” and that’s not P-A-M sounded out as
individual letters, like even the employees would say when they answered
the phone five years ago, but rather “Pam” like a girl’s name. With big
things going on in Tontitown, the Chicagoland native is now settled in
as boss and not planning to go anywhere.
“We had a guy at Werner who was on-site at Walmart,” Cushman
said, referring to a previous company he worked with in Omaha, Neb.
“We wanted to promote him and move him back to Omaha. He said
no. We asked ‘why?’ and he said he loves it here; the people are nice.
That’s all I ever experienced, all I ever heard about living in Northwest
Arkansas. So, when I was offered this job, I was positive I would love it.”

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Photography by John david Pittman

26 ArkAnsAs truckinG rePort | issue 4 2014