Never Stand Still

I worked for a beer/alcoholic beverage distribution company that operated pretty half haphazardly they were pretty close to working for a "trucking company". They were all about throwing people to the wolves and even had there own CDL training program and if you quit before a certain amount of time you owed them money. They were kind of like working for a trucking place and they did do a little bit of trucking and warehousing for a local macro brewer popular to Cleveland, but most of there trucking was hauling loads from the Miller-Coors Plant in Trenton, Ohio back to our warehouse in Solon, Ohio area. However they used to dead head down to Miller-Coors drop the empty trailers and come back with full trailers.

Well, the company decided that was a waste so instead they started hauling a brokered freight load out of Plasti Pak in Medina,Ohio. One of the truck load drivers said it was kind of a pain you had to leave the main warehouse, drive to Plasti Pak sit and wait to get loaded, then truck down to Pepsi in Cincinnati, Ohio wait to get unloaded then you could drive to Trenton, Ohio drop the empty trailer and pick up the full trailer.

The beer company ran some doubles as well to the drop lots they had. I was a route driver though wasn't in the truck load end of it I was route 709 Cleveland's lower south west side.

It was an okay route I guess. In general the job and place was nothing I wanted to do for 30 years and I had a chance to get out of the alcohol business in late 2014 and I took that chance and things have been better. Got into the food business which I like much much better.

 

CANNON EXPRESS Part II

Hey real quick thanks to @7-UP for the info on Cannon Express he has a lot of the inside scoop from the Cannon Express days and I've learned about Cannon Express from @7-UP .

Anyhow CR Kidd Produce was how Cannon Express Started and CR Kidd was leased on to Willis Shaw Express which was bought out by Comcar Industries of Aburndale, Florida and then eventually Comcar folded Willis Shaw Express into Midwest Coast Transport and killed off Willis Shaw Express as we all learned here in the past day like I said I didn't know Comcar killed Willis Shaw, but I'm not down on Comcar they don't run where I run and don't go where I go and quite frankly there fleet kind of stinks Comcar really isn't anything special I rarely ever see them here in northeast, Ohio.

Anyhow, in 1981 Dean Cannon who from what I learned from @7-UP was a wannabe driver, he bought a couple trucks from according to funding universe CR Kidd produce and now this wannabe driver who couldn't cut it as a driver for Willis Shaw Express, but Dean Cannon was in the trucking business with his 2 trucks. A year later Dean Cannon bought the rest of Clifford Riggins Fleet.

Now this is interesting and thanks to @7-UP for sharing this, when Dean Cannon had his couple trucks leased to Willis Shaw Express back in that time 1981 Willis Shaw didn't find drivers for lease trucks that was the fleet owners job, and I guess Dean Cannon wasn't personally the best person to work for he was a long ways away from Leeland James.
Leeland James was a visionary Dean Cannon was just some half baked opportunist contractor blues man big difference.

Anyhow Dean Cannon couldn't keep drivers and Willis Shaw Express terminated there lease with Cannon due to high driver over turn. Willis Shaw Express wasn't bought out by Comcar until 1987.

Now in my research Comcar's fleet isn't really that big not really not compared to some MCT there tractor fleet is in about the 400s and there trailer fleet is like 1100 trailers which compared to others is really not that big and spread that out all over the country there going to be a little sparse.

Anyhow, Willis Shaw Express who never had a good relationship decided to sever ties with Dean Cannon and left Dean Cannon stuck with a fleet of trucks that he had no use for, so Dean Cannon said forget it and started his own truck company. He took all the old CR Kidd trucks and traded them into an International dealership and bought those fancy International Pro Sleeper top of the heap trucks instead of the baseline bottom of the barrel trucks that most fleets buy.


Dean Cannon also got out of the refer business and got into the dry van freight business.

The original CR Kidd produce had 5 trucks, 20 trailers and 15 lease operators.

So after getting fired by Willis Shaw, Cannon bought new trucks started his own company traded in the old refer trucks for dry vans and with his wife Rose Marie had acquired 100 trailers by 1986 and was off and running. Cannon figured that he was on track and ready to go head to head right on with another company from Lowell, Arkansas right down the road from him. That company was known as JB Hunt and Cannon was ready now to compete with old Johnny Bryan Hunt, but the two men were vastly different people.

In the Introduction to the 1992 book JB Hunt The Long Haul To Success published by the University of Arkansas Press, they talk about JB Hunt him self god rest his soul and JB Hunt him self was like a modern day Texas oil tycoon guy from the 1950s or 1960s you know the guy with the dollar sign cuff-links and suit and tie, but also the ten gallon cowboy hat.

JB Hunt though also came from very poor means, but he was much more of a visionary and had much bigger ideas and was interested in ideas and was a smart man. Dean Cannon was just some guy looking to make a buck, Dean Cannon was not JB Hunt not even close to it from the sounds of it Cannon was just a somebody else s time and somebody else s money kind of business guy who was just there to make a buck run stuff into the ground. Which is what Cannon did eventually.

Anyhow Cannon was ready to go head to head with JB Hunt, now that he had his 100 trailers and then Cannon also also bought 100 trucks to rid him self of his fleet of owner operators and Cannon became an irregular route operating company.

Anyhow once nationwide operating authority was granted Cannon was ready to get down to business.

 

Willis Shaw Express was bought out by Delmonte in the 1970s then it was sold from Delmonte to RJ Reynolds then Willis Shaw Investments bought the company back and then resold it to Comcar in 1987 and Comcar a few years ago put Willis Shaw Express under.

 

Why Cannon Express? Mainly because while they were not a big company, they sure got around and everyone seems to remember them, and I knew they would be short and easier to get through, but I figured Cannon Express would fire up the old memory banks and it would be fun and easy.