Mike's Book Club: JB Hunt The Long Haul to Success

LOL! For a promo truck that truck isn't really even that nice LOL!

 

Yeah I never thought of that, it was probably some one off unit like that.

 

J.B. Hunt to the End

Alright everyone it's J.B. Hunt to the end as this is the last update for the book were now at the end it'll be quick too, because the last 2 chapters are about corporate strategy and J.B. Hunt the man him self.

The corporate strategy in 1990 was pretty much what there doing now. Get involved with a bunch of different stuff. Even though there core business was and always has been dry van work. However they got into intermodal and reffer trailers and flatbed and private fleets. They never got into LTL though I guess at that time they decided that wasn't profitable enough for them and they weren't set up to run like that. J.B. Hunt was and still is a very conservative company no frills equipment and slow steady growth, but not forced growth. They didn't really buy out many trucking companies. They were more interested in technology like computers and communications stuff like that. J.B. Hunt company watched other companies kill them selves with stupid acquisitions. They directly made reference to CF buying Emery Air Freight which hurt CF's revenue by 17% and how J.B. Hunt wasn't going to make that mistake.

J.B. Hunt was not a detail guy not in the least, he was not an operations guy, he was none of those things. He was almost a mad scientist so to speak he would come up with an idea and pitch it to all the management people. They then had to figure out if the idea would work or not. Sometimes the idea's worked and sometimes they didn't. Even Mrs. Hunt would be saying "No dear that idea isn't good."

Hunt didn't care about day to day stuff that was all for somebody else to worry about. It's hard to figure at least for me how tight had his hand on the trigger. It was his company, but it wasn't. The company is publicly traded and from day 1 had a lot of management and people like that, he was just the one who got the ball rolling then it went to others to actually run and execute.

J.B. Hunt company was the kind of place where they would buy the best Television set out on the market for example, but they wouldn't pay for cable TV because that you know costs money.

There trucks and trailers were no frills real bare bones, but they had a big lavish $15 million dollar corporate headquarters decorated with all kinds of tile and marble and stuff like that for "high level accounts who come for meetings."

In conclusion I really don't know what to say about the Hunt's or the company. The last chapter they talk about values you know companies like to talk about values usually I let all that values talk that companies say they have go in one ear and out the other. Some of the values talk they mean and other values talk about they don't mean, I wouldn't listen to hard to values talk. The real bottom line is do your job and keep moving forward the rest of it is all minutia.

Hunt's big thing was he was able to get the right people in the right spots and handle all the nuts and bolts while he went off running around scheming up new ideas. Like I said this book is way dated as it doesn't go past 1992 and since that book was written J.B. Hunt has passed on he died in 2006 and his wife might have some title, but I'm sure she's probably not that involved with company operations.

There like any place else like Wal-Mart or where ever the original owners have died off and now it's just management running the place and it's all just bean counters with there rules and regulations and guidelines for writing the guideline book and the entire things get's muddled in it's own bureaucracy.

Hunt knew that would happen the company would get big and he didn't want it to get real bureaucratic, but that was inevitable and now there like any place else I don't know if J.B. Hunt is #1 today like they were in the 1980s. Because the market place is bigger now, but so are there competitors. Werner and Swift weren't even on the map in 1980s and now at look at those companies also companies like Crete Carrier Corp and US Xpress have grown in size too, they would have all had to taken bites out of J.B. Hunt. But the Hunt's put the right people in place and had the guts and built a heck of a company together. Hunt loved the pursuit of new ideas and new deals and he really loved hunting that stuff down. Hunt was the kind of guy who would go to the gas station and tell them I don't need the senior discount, but instead of the senior discount why don't you give me a free news paper instead.

That's how he was that's what he did. That's how they did there business.

In our next series which I'll post the link to when I get started we look at a company that challenged Mr. Hunt a company that had a fleet as big as anyone else, but had flashy trucks with lots of bling and chrome and said to heck with traditional practices a company that came out of the underground and said "Schneider and J.B. Hunt they are played out and stale, I can move the same freight for the same price with 10xs the flash and do it just as good as all of them."

A company which was actually kind of a company that really marched to there own drum up until recently and that company is the one and only
WERNER ENTERPRISES a company that while not as big as J.B. in the 1980s has seen massive huge growth in the 1990s and we will be studying WERNER between the years 1956 and 2002+ so stay tuned for that because I'm excited to bring it to you lots of good pictures and stuff. I know we have a lot of Werner people on here so it should be a good time.

 

Yeah, Hunt was not a details guy he would put together an idea and they would find someone to pitch there idea to and the minute the person they were pitching to, took the deal Hunt was no longer interested. The execution and how it all went down and the day to day was of zero interest to Hunt.