Inside U.S. Xpress’ Award-Winning Leadership Development Programs
U.S. Xpress headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Photo: Deborah Lockridge
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U.S. Xpress headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Photo: Deborah Lockridge
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We may hear a lot about the driver shortage and even the technician shortage, but increasingly trucking is facing a shortage of talented leadership as well. U.S. Xpress has been taking steps to combat that, and recently was recognized with a national human resources award for its innovative efforts to recruit and develop talent.
“As we look at a lot of our peers, they have near retirement level management teams and are looking for talent to backfill that,” said CEO Eric Fuller, “I think they’re not finding, all the way to up the executive level, the type of talent they need to fill those positions,” he told HDT in an interview at the truckload fleet’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, headquarters.
Earlier this year, Fuller was named CEO and Lisa Quinn Pate was named president and chief administrative officer, the culmination of a five-year transition process to new leadership for the company. The two put into place their own management team that reflects the way they want to pivot the company, “to become what we call a more professionally managed orientation, focused on metrics, data, and processes,” Fuller said.
And sometimes, Quinn Pate explained, there were people who had been with the company for a long time but weren’t the right fit. “That was a very painful process to go through,” she said. “We realized we may need to go outside the company, but our philosophy was that we want the best people for the job in that seat — and they may be internal or they may be external.”
That experience helped lead to the launch of a two-year leadership development program called Xpress Elite, designed to identify high-potential employees inside and outside of the company and develop them into future leaders for U.S. Xpress.
Inside Xpress Elite
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