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

Discussion in 'LTL and Local Delivery Trucking Forum' started by Mike2633, Feb 12, 2018.

  1. Mike2633

    Mike2633 Road Train Member

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    Hi everybody!

    Once again we dive into another fascinating read here on Mike's Book Club.

    Introduction
    I'm going to bring you another fascinating tale of the JB Hunt story, but old school JB Hunt, this JB Hunt:
    J.B.-Hunt.jpg
    The JB Hunt with the tanish yellow cab over tractors of yester-year that you used to see flying down the highway.

    Do you guys remember the 1990s?
    When JB Hunt and Schneider both had those International Cab Over tractors called "The Bus"?
    And it wasn't just them check out this cool old school MBM truck from the early 1990s:
    MBM.jpg
    [​IMG]

    Were going to be talking JB Hunt history up and too 1992. When the University of Arkansas press wrote the book J.B.Hunt The Long Haul to Success by Marvin Schwartz Copyright 1992 University of Arkansas press.

    Just Friday night about 2 weeks ago now I was having a conversation with Longarm in person he was camped out behind a stop waiting for the morning for the stop to open and he was telling me about his years at Prime Inc and he said that really the problem with some lease operators is they don't have any business acumen and you know who the truckers were who had business acumen? They were Don Schneider, J.B. Hunt and C.L. Werner and C.R.England and others but those are the biggies. Basically anyone who has there name on the side of a truck.

    Those were the guys who had real business acumen and J.B. Hunt really he was a very sharp man he had business acumen I know a lot of people don't care for the company J.B. Hunt and think it's the worst place ever. But if you put that all aside the man built a huge company out of nothing. Now granted were talking old America and I don't know things were different. I'm not saying it couldn't be done today, but lets just say there were different opportunities and circumstances and J.B. Hunt actually started pretty small to tell you the truth but his story is fairly interesting. So without further ado will get started.
     
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  3. Mike2633

    Mike2633 Road Train Member

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    Chapter 1 Up from the Underground

    Johnnie Bryan Hunt was born in 1927 in Cleburne County, Arkansas to Walter and Alma Hunt. He was the third child of the couple.

    The Hunts were dirt poor and essentially Walter Hunt worked as a "dirt farmer" basically they busted there backs for peanuts.

    Walter Hunt worked 6-7 days a week drilling for oil in Cleburne County Arkansas. The oil business did not take and the father worked all over the state of Arkansas as a share cropper for next to almost nothing. Eventually they moved back to Cleburne county Arkansas and the father got a job working on a portable logging site where J.B. started working as well.

    As a young-man 11, 12 maybe 13 years old JB would skin the logs and then transport them via horse and buggy, but the logging site had an old truck that was used to haul the rough lumber to town and JB Hunt and his 5 brothers and sister would take the truck at night into town with the lumber they hauled the lumber for free because they wanted to go into town badly.

    At that time loggers and there families pretty much lived at the logging site and it blew.

    Around the time J.B. Hunt reached 7th grade he pretty much figured that working in the logging camp was a better way to help support his family then going to school so J.B. Hunt called school quits. So he went to work logging for 12 hours a day for $1.50 a day wage.

    Hunt at age 12 worked in a planer mill which cuts rough lumber board into smooth board planes the roughness away.

    The planing created a lot of wood shavings and chicken farmers from Heber Springs, Arkansas would come to the mill to get the wood shavings and use them as floor liner in there chicken houses.

    Well J.B. Hunt as a 12 year old said you know there might be money to be made here. The farmers because there shoveling the shavings in there trucks them selves aren't paying us anything, but maybe if we can load there trucks for them we can charge for the shavings.

    So Hunt's Uncle who was the mills carpenter built a building on stilts and they collected all the shavings in that building and the trucks parked underneath it and they pulled a lever back and whooosh the whole cargo hold of the truck was filled with shavings.

    As a 12 year old J.B. Hunt was now making $4.00 a day working at the mill and $12.00 a day selling shavings to farmers. Hunt was making $16.00 a day as a 12 year old kid working at his uncles planer mill not bad.

    Hunt worked at the mill through out his teen years and drove the lumber truck and other assortments of jobs.

    By age 18 Hunt joined the Army the year was 1945. However by this time his mother became ill and Hunt was sent to Searcy, Arkansas Hospital where he was stationed and helped to look after his mother.
    [​IMG]

    The military recruited Hunt for officer school after the war had ended and Hunt declined. The offer and went back to work.

    Hunt worked at the mill and began with his brothers loading trucks with boards produced at the mill and selling those boards where ever.

    Hunt learned lots of salesmanship out there with his truck full of lumber. One night Hunt took two trucks to a lumber yard and the lumber yard owner liked to tease Hunt about being single. Hunt said to him, hey man, I was supposed to get married tonight, but only if I could sell both of these loads of lumber. This tactic was a lie, but it didn't matter the lumber yard owner said "Oh my while I have no room, I mine as well make room yes I'll take both loads."

    Hunt sold two truck loads of lumber there on the spot.

    Hunt hauled more then lumber he often bought chickens from the chicken farmers and trucked them over to Swift and Company Meat Packing in Missouri where he would sell the chickens for money.

    This is where Hunt got involved with a poultry man named DeBusk. DeBusk was a fairly well off merchant and owned the only feed mill in Heber Springs. DeBusk had a very attractive daughter by the name of Johnelle *ahem*.

    However around that time Hunt sold wood boards and trucked live stock over to Swift and Company in Dexter, MO.

    In 1948 J.B. Hunt decided to go into auctioneering so he went to auction school came back to Heber Spring bought the live stock sale barn and went belly up and was $3,600.00 in debt.

    Also J.B. and Johnelle were starting to see a bit of each other, you all know how it is and Hunt decided he had done all he could in Heber Springs and borrowed $10.00 and went to Little Rock. Leaving behind a starting to blossom relationship with Johnelle.

    Now why is Johnelle DeBusk important? You never heard about Leeland Jame's wife?

    Well what you must understand is Johnelle was as much the J in J. B. Hunt as J.B. Hunt was the J. in J.B. Hunt. Johnnie and Johnelle operated a lot like Ronald and Nancy Reagan. For the most part it was really the two of them.

    Hunt was 21 and Johnelle was 16 when they first started really getting serious. Hunt knew Johnelle's family and Johnelle's parents always liked J.B. the problem was the DeBusk's were fairly well off Johnelle grew up with piano lessons and school and church and all that good stuff and was going to go to college to become a school teacher.

    Where Hunt was a 21 year old truck driver who worked for $4.00 a day and trucked chickens over to the slaughter house.

    J.B. Hunt didn't think the Debusk's were to hot to have him marry there daughter, but J.B. Hunt had a truck and everyone liked hopping on that truck for rides and Johnelle one day saw Hunt coming and ran over to him as fast as she could to sit in the seat next to him. The two dated for 5 years before they got married and into the poultry business together. Which was no biggie, because Johnelle's father was also in the poultry business so they both knew about that.

    JB and Johnelle would go on dates before they were married to collect and weigh chickens and load the truck up to go to the slaughter house. I don't know if to many kids are doing stuff like that now a days. They might be I don't know living 192 city blocks away from down town Cleveland I'm not really up on rural trends.

    Anyhow that's all for now!
     
  4. LoneCowboy

    LoneCowboy Road Train Member

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    oh ohoh, i wanna be a charter member of Mike's Book Club. (like the old capital records club, only us oldsters probably remember that).

    Sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the next chapter.
     
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  5. Mike2633

    Mike2633 Road Train Member

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    I put this picture in here for you:
    [​IMG]
    What do you think of that set up?
     
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  6. Mike2633

    Mike2633 Road Train Member

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    I remember TV commercials in the 1990s for the Columbia Record Club.
     
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  7. kemosabi49

    kemosabi49 Trucker Forum STAFF Staff Member

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    When I started driving in the mid 90s, Schneider ran those cabovers at 55mph and JB was all the way up at 59mph. Used to see a lot of the old JB truck running containers out in Cali. Always tell by the reddish frame and ends of the drives.
     
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  8. Mike2633

    Mike2633 Road Train Member

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    [​IMG]

    JB Hunt 1990s Intermodal.jpg
     
  9. Mike2633

    Mike2633 Road Train Member

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    Yes that's right the red frames and the red container chassis.
     
  10. Mike2633

    Mike2633 Road Train Member

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  11. Mike_77

    Mike_77 Medium Load Member

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    Those JB hunt COE's with orange or red frames were cool in their own sort of way, I wish fleets today put that kind of effort into differentiating their equipment. During that era Swift painted their frames light blue.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2018
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