Commentary: Why Innovation’s More Important Than Ever
Deborah Lockridge
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Deborah Lockridge
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When we started our HDT Truck Fleet Innovators program in 2006, the inaugural group was a veritable who’s who of companies that were founded or came into their own after the deregulation of 1980: CFI’s Glenn Brown, Heartland’s Russ Gerdin, Crete Carrier’s Duane Acklie, Swift’s Jerry Moyes, Schneider National’s Don Schneider, New Century Transportation’s Harry Muhlschlegel, and U.S. Xpress’ Max Fuller and Pat Quinn.
As I once again sat in U.S. Xpress headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last month interviewing the offspring of Fuller and Quinn, the new leaders of the company, I couldn’t help but reflect on the changes we’ve seen. Gerdin, Acklie, Quinn and Schneider have all passed away. New Century went out of business, and CFI has been sold three times in the intervening years. Moyes recently stepped down at Swift, which now has joined forces with Knight (a later Truck Fleet Innovator, by the way) to form a mega-carrier. Schneider National (now just Schneider) has gone public.
And Max Fuller is still executive chairman at U.S. Xpress, but his son Eric Fuller is now CEO, and Pat Quinn’s daughter, Lisa Quinn Pate (an attorney like her late father), is president and chief administrative officer. Max has stepped back to let Eric and Lisa run the day-to-day operations of the company.
Eric and Lisa, of course, are not Max and Pat. And in what looks to be a wise move, they’ve gone through a five-year transition period of reinventing the management team in a way they believe will better fit the company and the industry as they are today — and prepare for what they will be in the future.
The two are just as innovative in their way as their fathers. This year, HR.com named the company’s Xpress Elite program the top corporate leadership program in …Read the rest of this story
