Award-Winning Regional Journal of the Arkansas Trucking Association Vol. 13, No. 3 • June 2008 • $4.95

CO

VERS

TO

RY

20 Arkansas Trucking Report, June 2008

CO

VERS

TO

RY

Michael Barr drew on his first job experience to lead a dramatic corporate turnaround.

By Lane KiddExecutive EditorPhotography by Jon D. Kennedy

“I always wanted to be a trucker,” said Michael Barr, as we rode in his pickup on a recent warm afternoon in early June. “I used to get on my bicycle when I was 10 or 11,” he says, slowly tapping his steering wheel, “and I would ride, sometimes with a buddy but usu-ally by myself, the two or three miles down this country road from my house to Interstate 40 and I would just sit there on a hill and watch all those trucks go by.

“I would just sit there,” he repeats for emphasis with a smile, “and watch, wondering where those trucks had been and where they were going and which ones looked good and which ones didn’t.

“My buddies would always want to head on back after a few minutes and I would stay and just watch those trucks go by.”

Business executives don’t usually talk like that. Not too many with whom I have visited talk about their childhood in such vivid detail as Barr does, or tell a story about riding a bicycle to prove a point.

It is written somewhere that a person who can do as an adult what he dreamed about as a child will live a satisfied life. If true, Barr, who is approaching his 40th birthday, is one happy guy; not completely satisfied by any stretch, but definitely enjoying the ride.

We’re sitting in Michael’s second story office at Transco Lines, or TLI, in Russellville, Ark. Harold Barr, Michael’s dad, had stopped by. He has a nicely appointed office as presi-dent of the trucking company but one that feels a little cramped because it has no win-dows. I joked that most presidents of a truck-ing company would have an office with at least one window.

He gets up out of his chair and walks to a back door that opens out onto a stairway. “I can open this door,” he says, demonstrating as he steps out on the metal platform, “and stand

out here and breathe fresh air and see what’s going on anytime I want,” he says laughing.

To get a sense of Barr and his love for trucking, simply listen to him and his father talk about his obsession with trucks from the time he was young. “I could tell the dif-ference between a Peterbilt and a Kenworth when I was what,” looking at his dad Harold, “four or five years old?” “Trucks were the only thing you wanted to talk about,” his father responds.

The banter between Michael and his father is natural and good natured, the father a little shy and reserved, the son respectful, deferring to him whenever he spoke.

The elder Barr was a little vague when I asked what the most foolish thing his son did growing up, a question that had Michael grin-ning and covering his eyes. The father waved that one off, saying that his son did most of

the things that sons growing up do. “You would be surprised if you asked me to leave the room what he might say,” Michael offered.

“One thing for which I have always been proud of him,” his father adds, “is how he has remained focused on his goals, certainly much better than I ever could.

His father remembers that Michael always had a strong work ethic but one trait he tried to instill in his son was to be flex-ible. Stand on principles but in dealing with people, flexibility can be an asset he said. “You

Continues

“... I would just sIt there on a hIll and

watch all those trucks go by.”

Arkansas Trucking Report, June 2008 21

know, in a storm the rigid hardwoods are usually the first to go down while a pine tree will sway back and forth,” Harold said. “Treat others with respect and treat them as you would want to be treated.”

“Be willing to adjust,” Michael added, “rather than expecting others to always adjust to your ways.”

After visiting with Transco’s owner, Zella Harrell (see sidebar), we climbed into Barr’s Ford pickup for the short drive west on I-40 to Clarksville, Barr’s hometown and where he has put down roots with his wife, Liz, and their three children.

“I have only had two real jobs in my business career,” Barr says, “well, three really,” referring to a brief eight month stint with a distribution company. His success so far is due he believes to the experience he gained at American Freightways (AF), now FedEx Freight, in Harrison, Arkansas.

Michael Barr’s mentor is the person who offered him that first job – the late Sheridan Garrison, the company’s found-er. “Sheridan Garrison is my hero,” Barr says, his voice trailing off and glancing out his side window as we drive toward Clarksville.

Child spyAs we exited I-40 and took a small

state highway to the west of Clarksville, Barr shared a story about his next door neighbor when he was growing up. “One thing that I cherish is an influence that Walter Looper had on me,” said Barr. “I grew up next to the largest cattle ranch in the county and he owned it.”

“Walt was a character to say the least,” he said. “He was county sheriff for several years, he knew everybody, and was one of the more colorful characters we have ever had here in Johnson County. We moved into a house next to his cattle ranch. I was in the second grade and my dad had become superintendent of the school.

“I was always interested in trucks, and trailers and tractors and my backyard was right there next to his farm” and Barr said the activity on that ranch was more than intriguing to a kid.

“I was probably 10 or 11 years old,” Barr recalls, “I would fish and hunt and

all those things little boys do out in the country but I saw those cowboys round-ing up cattle and riding horses and those big trailers coming in and out and I wanted to be in the action,” he says, smil-ing.

“Anyway, I came up with this idea that what I was going to do was spy on Walt and his ranch. I asked my parents for a pair of binoculars and I never told [them] why. Every morning I would set out on my mission and crawl around on those hills and bury myself in the grass and lay there and look at them with my binoculars.

“For whatever reason I was just fasci-nated with that cattle ranch and Walt and all those cowboys,” Barr says, shaking his head, at the memory as we drove on past the farm. “One day I was all set up on the side of a hill and watching and all of a sudden I heard some footsteps come up behind me and it was Walt and he said, ‘Well, I finally caught you, boy. What are you doing up here?’

“I hemmed and hawed and tried to make up some story but of course Walt knew exactly what I was doing. He said, ‘you know, I think if you are so interested in what we are doing, you should just come on over and work for me.’

“I was so excited,” he said. Barr started out mowing lawns and wound up working for him full time in the summers.

“I remember getting my first check for like $7.00 and I thought that I had made the big time,” says Barr. “I learned a lot of things from him over the next few years because he would let me ride into town with him and he always met with local politicians, met the county judges and people around town. I loved to hear him talk to those people.

“He would ask me to drive all kinds of stuff and I used to tear up his farm equipment and he never yelled at me one time,” he said. “I remember one day he had me driving one of his farm trucks and

I hit a little piece of a cattle guard and bent the fender on the truck and I was scared to death to tell him. He said, ‘you know you’re going to have accidents like that when you’re only 16 years old’ and I said, ‘Mr. Looper, I’m only 12 years old.’”

“He once told me that there was nothing like having a good wife, a good dog, or a good horse and if you could ever have all three at the same time, you have it made.”

The family We arrived at Barr’s home a few

miles outside Clarksville and were greeted by Barr’s wife, the former Elizabeth Ann Killane. Liz was born on Long Island, New York. Outgoing and always smiling, she moved with her family to Clarksville when she was 10 years old. Her thick

Long Island accent, however, hung around.

“Some people around here ask what country I’m from,” she says laughing, “and yet I have lived here almost thirty years. It’s a small town and I know just about every-one but I always get asked by somebody so I sometimes make up a story and tell them

I’m part of a witness relocation program and I can’t really talk about it.”

She recalls that Michael was less than enthusiastic about her accent. “When our daughter was born we lived in Fort

CO

VERS

TO

RY

“we decIde we were goIng to have to fIx the company

or gIve up.”

Barr with his wife, Liz

22 Arkansas Trucking Report, June 2008

A National Law Firm Dedicated to Trucking.

A Legal Defense Plan Designed By and For Truckers.

Vital Protection for America’s Best Drivers and Trucking Companies.

Get Someone on Your Side

Jim C. Klepper, Esq.800-417-3552www.driverslegalplan.com

®

Wayne, Indiana, and Michael was work-ing at AF and he used to say, ‘when I’m gone to work during the day, try not to talk to Mattie too much’ and he had these old tapes of The Andy Griffith Show and he would say ‘now just play those tapes during the day so that she can hear how we are supposed to talk.’”

The Barrs were married on the 4th of July in 1992, and they have three kids, a daughter Madison, “our cheerleader in the family,” and twin sons Jack, “our straight A student, reads a lot and tries every sport at least once,” and Casey, “always a doer who loves trucking,’ a kid who Barr says will drive the truck and trailer in the fields while he bales the hay. “We don’t even have to tell him [Casey] to mow the lawn,” Liz says.

The Barrs have purchased property where they are raising cattle, about four miles from their home. That’s where they hope to eventually build on a spot that will afford them a beautiful westward vista of rolling hills. Liz Barr keeps the farm running while her husband man-ages Transco Lines. “The farm can’t wait till he gets home,” she explains, so she makes the daily trips to feed and watch the cattle.

“It was magical”After a visit out to their farm, we

returned to his home and sat at the kitchen table. Barr turned to sharing how his first job at American Freightways set a foundation that continues to help him in his role as president of Transco Lines.

“I had mentioned to my college professors, one of whom was David Broach,” he said, “that I had always want-ed to work in the trucking industry and he had some contacts in trucking and lined up some interviews.”

His first interview at an Arkansas trucking company was not pleasant. Barr remembers that “this person gave me every reason why I should not work in the industry and I didn’t need to waste my time, and I thought well, maybe, trucking is not right for me after all.”

“The next week somebody suggested Arkansas Freightways, which it was called at the time, and I lined up an interview,” said Barr. He drove to Harrison and “my first interview was with [the late] Carl Thomas, vice president of safety and security.”

Barr smiles and crosses his arms for effect and said, “Carl leaned back and put his feet up on the desk, got a big

dip of Skoal, offered me some and said, ‘so you’re from Clarksville. I know some people over there and that’s a pretty nice town. You know, Michael, we’re nothing but good ol’ country boys here but we love trucking’ and I thought ‘I belong here!’”

Tom Doty, now president of Glory Transportation, Inc. in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but also at AF at the time, interviewed Barr next. “I didn’t think it went well,” Barr laughs. “He asked me some of the most off the wall questions and I didn’t catch his meaning half the time. I remember he asked ‘what did I see in a freight salesman?’ and I took him literally and I said, ‘I don’t know, they could be big, fat, old, young’ and then it hit me what he meant and I thought well, I have definitely failed this one.”

Barr wound up in the office of T. J. Jones, executive vice president of AF at the time. “He said ‘you have done so well today that the next person who comes through that door will be Sheridan Garrison. Do you know who that is?’ and I said, ‘yes sir.’ In a couple minutes, in walked Sheridan and he shook my hand and sat down and he said, ‘Michael, I

CO

VERS

TO

RY

Continues

Arkansas Trucking Report, June 2008 23

believe you are exactly what we are look-ing for. You’re a good old farm country boy like we are. Now, Doty sort of ques-tions how smart you are’ and Sheridan laughed, ‘but you have to understand, Tom Doty is kind of up there on another level than the rest of us here and we think you are exactly what we want, a good Arkansas boy raised by a good family. We want you to work for us.”

“But, Sheridan said he had one condition, that I had another school year left and I had to maintain at least a 3.2 grade point average and that I was to send him the report card when I finished. I did not want to let him down. I hit the books and made nothing but all “A’s” and could not wait to send that report card to Harrison.

He worked eight years at AF, pro-gressing and moving along the corpo-rate ladder before he was lured away to join some friends who were working at the Target Distribution Center in Little Rock. “It is kind of complicated looking back to explain why I left AF but I did and there were many times after that I thought it might have been the worst mistake I ever made. However, it has turned out great and I am really glad for that.”

Barr says that he caught up with Garrison a couple times in the late 1990s, at meetings of the Arkansas Trucking Association. “He seemed happy for me. He said ‘if and when you ever want to come back, don’t even call, just drive to Harrison and we’ll put you to work.’”

“All the great people I worked with and friendships and relationships I formed at AF really defined my career. The culture and the enthusiasm there were so contagious. You knew you were winning, and growing and working for a great man. It was magical.”

Fall and reboundOnly eight months after leaving

AF, his worst fears were realized. He had made a mistake. He quit his job at Target’s distribution center in Little Rock; not a difficult decision because he says that he “belonged on the other side of the fence, the trucking side.”

However, his young family needed to settle down so he did what many young men do – he headed home. Little did he realize then he would soon be given a tre-mendous opportunity in which he would rely on the experiences he gained at AF.

“Zella actually hired me in October

of 1998,” says Barr. Harrell offered him a job at TLI in nearby Russellville, a small trucking company with fewer than 100 trucks, and he worked in operations where he did a little bit of everything – soliciting freight, coordinating and dis-patching loads, handling customer rela-tions and complaints. He was essentially starting over and he loved it.

“I had been there about a year,” he says, “when Zella walked in one Friday afternoon. She mentioned that she would like to talk to me. I was in a mood to go home but thought I must have done something wrong but that wasn’t it. She said that she had been watching me and was impressed and that she wanted me to help her run this company.

“I was a little doubtful that I could do the job but she was persistent and in fact, she was more confident in me than maybe I was,” he said.

“I started out as the general manager and I became president in 2000,” he says. Barr recalls that the operating envi-ronment was really slipping in 1999, but by 2000, things were tough all around, including at Transco Lines, and more trucking companies were closing their

Continues

CO

VERS

TO

RY

Born: December 3, 1969 in Fayetteville, Arkansas

HigH ScHool: graduated from clarksville H.S.

college: Bachelors degree in business management from Arkansas Tech University

“I went to Arkansas State University for one semester to try and walk on there and play football. I don’t know what ever made me try to do that. I realized quickly that speed was the name of the game and I wasn’t going to do well.”

MArrieD elizabeth Ann Killane on July 4, 1992 and they have three children: Madison, casey, and Jack.

cUrrenT PoSiTion: President, Transco lines, inc.

BUSineSS cAreer:1992 – 1998 American Freightways1998 – present Transco lines, inc.

FAvoriTe MeAl: “grilled steak with fried squash and gar-den ripe tomatoes with a baked potato.”

FirST cAr: 1981 Silver Mustang

FAvoriTe MUSic: “i like old country like Merle Haggard and george Jones but it is really hard to beat Johnny cash.”

24 Arkansas Trucking Report, June 2008

Nothing gives me more pride than to know that the outstanding award-winning Arkansas Trucking Report is produced here in our own state by the Arkansas Trucking Association. ATR is a quality, timely magazine that confronts the issues and researches the topics important to me and my industry. It’s one of the few magazines I am always sure to read thoroughly and the only one I can recommend and support with my own name. Gary Salisbury President Fikes Truck Line

For advertising information, contact Jennifer Matthews Kidd, publisher, at 501.907.6776.

CO

VERS

TO

RY

doors than at anytime since deregula-tion. Many companies were teetering on the edge.

“She turned the reins over to me in the middle of these really tough times and I called a meeting,” he says. “Gene Carter had joined our company as our chief financial officer and we decided that we were going to have to fix the company or give up.”

Restructuring the company required a combination of operational and cultural changes. Barr drew on his experience at AF. He decided to try and apply some of the same principles at Transco that he had learned at the burgeoning LTL car-rier, a risky decision.

Interregional LTL carriers are struc-tured both operationally and culturally much different than small long-haul dry van trucking companies. However, Barr believed that much of what he learned within the AF corporate culture were highly applicable.

“One thing that AF always stressed was that we were not in the trucking business, Barr explains. “We were in the business of satisfying customers – a phi-losophy that I knew worked and that was the first thing I wanted to create in the

employees here at TLI. We shifted some corporate attitudes and that began to pay dividends quickly.”

Barr designed a business model that he believed could reduce irregular route miles. He was aware that LTL carriers occasionally contract to third party carri-ers in unbalanced freight lanes. Securing purchased transportation contracts would be no easy task but if successful, it could give the company a secure niche. In order to get the business though, he would have to mold a corporate culture at TLI

that could maintain a standard of quality that contractor customers would demand.

Barr stopped promising his custom-ers the moon, only what the company could realistically deliver and at a fair price. He implemented the plan and Transco not only survived, it thrived.

“We now have about 345 employees here,” Barr says, proudly. He says that the transition wasn’t always easy. He has an experienced management team however, and “they helped us get the job done, to do things that needed to be improved.”

26 Arkansas Trucking Report, June 2008

TRAD

ES

EC

RETS

Miss ZellaZella Harrell, ‘Miss Zella’ or ‘Momma’ as some of her employees refer

to her, owns TLI and is not bashful about taking credit for making the hir-ing decisions, at least a few years ago. “I was looking for someone and having known his father and Michael’s background with American Freightways I thought he could do the job.”

Miss Zella is not active in the company these days but her story could easily be an executive profile in her own right. She and her late husband, Jim Harrell, started the trucking company. “He was from Camden and we met in college. Jim was a dreamer and he taught me how to dream,” she says fondly. “We did a lot of things that were struggles and we didn’t know some days if we would be here the next. Things just happened.”

Jim and Zella Harrell bought a car dealership in nearby Atkins, Arkansas, before purchasing the Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in Russellville. “I was actively engaged in every business we owned, always have been,” she says. They also dabbled in real estate and her husband loved politics. He ran for and won a seat in the Arkansas General Assembly, “the youngest state legisla-tor ever elected at the time,” says Harrell proudly.

A widow for the last 15 years, Miss Zella is attractive and energetic, busy all the time, a “workaholic” she says, but finds time to travel occasionally with friends. Her favorite country is Italy.

The beginnings of TLI can actually be traced to an International truck dealership the Harrells owned. They also had a small truck brokerage even though “we discovered not long after that if you are going to move freight, you have to have trucks,” so when they sold the truck dealership in 1986, “we simply kept the used trucks that were on our lot and started Transco Leasing Company and we started the trucking company.”

Miss Zella handed the management reins to Barr a few years ago. She stays in touch but is not at the office every day. “I have a lot of faith and confidence in him,” she says. Harrell is savvy. She knows sharp executives do not come along every day. ““If you don’t develop a niche in trucking you can’t make it and Michael had a vision about how to do that. Like I tell Michael, you win a few and you lose a few. Losses are only experiences. We have always come to agreement because we look at problems as simply opportunities and learning experiences.”

Barr is equally complimentary. “She’s been through a whole lot of experi-ences in her life and a lot of times I need that voice of experience to reaffirm what I am thinking or to change what I am thinking,” he says. “Everything I have brought to her she is always great to always give me a similar example in her life.”

The patchAs our conversation wound down,

Barr returned to talking about Sheridan Garrison.

“The thing I really appreciated the most about him, other than his tal-ent for growing a company, was his genuine nature. He was always willing to start with a smile and a laugh and you just don’t meet too many people who achieved the success he had or earned the positions that he had who would be as genuine as he was.”

“When I decided to leave American Freightways I requested a meeting with him because I felt so bad about leav-ing the company and was really having second thoughts but a commitment had been made. We met but Sheridan didn’t want to talk to me about me leaving.

He said ‘well Michael, you do what you need to do’ and he told me the story about how he and his brother managed Garrison Motor Freight and how badly he felt when he decided to sell the company and the regrets he had but that he had made a commitment to sell so he did. Of course, the Garrison brothers opened Arkansas Freightways two years later.

Before the meeting ended, Barr says that Garrison told him to wait a second, that he had something for him. “He fumbled around in his desk and said that he only had three or so of them left after all these years but he wanted me to have one and he pulled out this red and white patch like you would wear on a uniform and it had ‘GMF’ on it, a Garrison Motor Freight patch.”

Barr pulled his truck over to the side of the road. He reached into the back and grabbed his black leather satchel. Looking inside, he pulled out the GMF patch. “I carry it everywhere I go.”

Arkansas Trucking Report, June 2008 27