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

End of Chapter 1

Hi everyone, so here it is the end of Chapter 1 of JB Hunt Corporate History to 1980.

In the late 1940s early 1950s with $10.00 in hand and an engagement ring bought J.B. moved to Little Rock, Arkansas and got him self the "third bunk" from the bottom at the Little Rock, Arkansas YMCA. Which at that time cost $7.00 for 7 nights.

With funds rapidly deteriorating Hunt had to think quickly and he got him self a job working for East Texas Motor Freight:


Hunt I think worked for ETMF for like $40.00 a week back in those days. He was on call all the time and was sent all over the place.

Eventually he ended up at a terminal that ETMF shared with Superior Forwarding from St. Louis.

As a driver for Superior Forwarding Hunt ended up seeing the burning rice hulls. At the time there was not good way to package and sell rice hulls as animal bedding. So Mr. Hunt , started designing a machine for packaging rice hulls so he could sell them as animal bedding.

In the early 1960s the J.B. Hunt Company was formed when his rice machine came to fruition. It is also worth noting while Hunt was a driver he also sold Sod out of the trunk of his car on the weekend and was able to sell stock in the JB Hunt Company where he and his wife Johnelle worked. There major investor was windrock-rockeffler company who owned the grass far that grew most of Hunts sod that he sold as a side line. Hunts rice hull business which was his original business did end up making it however it was a slow go at first and pretty touch and go.

Now, by the 1970s Hunt had made enough in the rice hull business where he sold the business back to Windrock and a man from Rolston-Purina who was a big rice hull customer introduced Hunt to a Kansas trucking company owner who hauled dressed chickens in refer trailers and thought that, that would be a good business for Hunt to get into. This particular company owner Bill Stephens wanted out of the trucking business so Hunt bought his business and ended up with 5 tractors and 7 refer trailers.

Rolston-Purina was a big user of this particular company and promised to stay on with Hunt and they did. but shortly into Hunts new trucking business start up Rolston-Purina got out of the chicken business and didn't need Hunt any more.

Also this was the early 70s and Hunt had a very hard time dealing with the ICC and it was very hard for him to get any kind of authority very bad time to enter the trucking business, Hunt was a dry van hauler and had no real steady business in the late 1960s. However J.B. expanded little by little slow and painfully. but they were far from the fancy state of the art out fit of brand new cab over Internationals that we know from the 1990s:

Back in those days once the ICC put the kabosh on Hunt's refer business Hunt switched over to dry vans and slowly expanded by 1973 Hunt had 75 drivers working for him and this old old worn out fleet of worn trucks old and worn. The J.B. Hunt drivers worked for $0.08 a mile and loaded and unloaded there freight for free. The J.B. Hunt drivers all wore there hair long and looked filthy and were constantly getting pulled over by the police and there power units were so worn and such old junk that they were constantly breaking down littering the highway and being towed every which way.

Wayne Hensen the first fleet manager at J.B. Hunt said "Are trucks were so worn out they were breaking down everywhere I would call a wrecker from the nearest town and have them tow the trucks to get fixed."


Anyhow, back in those days everything was done on paper and there were no computers in the dispatch room. They had a giant board on the wall and it had the drivers name his tractor # and then what # trailer he was pulling on one side of the room was dispatch and on the other side of the room was the marketing department. The marketing department was getting loads lined up and dispatch was sending them out.

There was quote "A lot of yelling and screaming in the old days, but we got the job done."

Towards the end of the 1970s deregulation was coming and the ICC was approving most people for authority because they knew there day was done.

While companies like CF were hurt in a way by deregulation companies like J.B. Hunt benefited some by it you could kind of say. Because the I.C.C. really gave Hunt very little authority to haul anything.

Hunt's trucking really kind of started as a private fleet a little bit for the rice hull business and then when they got out of that business they got into the for hire freight business.

Anyhow tune in next time for deregulation and "the modern trucking industry" (as it was in the 1980s and early 1990s.)

 

In 2009-2010ish-2011ish around there JB did have a few of these in the fleet it's a shame they didn't have more because these are actually pretty nice looking trucks for there fleet: