FULLER, PATE TAKE THE WHEEL AT U.S. XPRESS
Co-founder Max Fuller becomes executive chairman
Newly appointed U.S. Xpress Enterprises chief Eric Fuller says he plans to take part in a White House meeting in the next week or two along with several other top trucking industry executives.
“We need $250 billion to $300 billion for the nation’s highways,” said Fuller, who was named Thursday as CEO of one of the nation’s biggest truckload carriers. “We have a crumbling infrastructure.”
Also elevated by the Chattanooga-based trucker’s board of directors was Lisa Quinn Pate to president of the $1.5 billion-a-year trucking business.
The moves are a generational shift as their fathers, Max Fuller and the late Pat Quinn, were U.S. Xpress founders more than 30 years ago.
Max Fuller, who was CEO, will stay involved in the privately held business as executive chairman, according to the company.
“He wants to be very involved,” said Eric Fuller, 40, who had been the company’s president and chief operating officer for
the past five years.
Pate, 47, who has served as general counsel and chief administrative officer, said that Max Fuller isn’t retiring.
“We’re fortunate to be mentored by him on a daily basis. That will continue,” she said.
Max Fuller said the new management roles are one of many building blocks in the company’s ongoing preparation for years of success based on data-driven strategies.
“I’m confident that Eric and Lisa are the right people to take U.S. Xpress to the next level,” he said in a statement.
Eric Fuller said in an interview at the carrier’s Jenkins Road headquarters that the transition has been planned out and in the works.
“We’re focused on trying to prepare ourselves for the next 25 years,” he said.
U.S. Xpress employs about 10,000 workers nationwide, including about 7,500 drivers and about 1,200 workers in the Chattanooga area.
For Chattanooga, the new CEO said the company is “fully invested” in the city.
“We’re fully committed to Chattanooga in the long term,” he said.
Fuller said he’s excited about the direction of the city and it’s focus on innovation and technology.
“As trucking evolves, it will become a lot more tech heavy,” he said. “We’ll
become more and more like a tech company. We’ll have to adopt technology early … integrate it into all our systems and equipment. Having that environment in Chattanooga, we think is pretty helpful.”
Among key challenges facing U.S. Xpress and the industry are finding and keeping drivers, they said.
“Improving driver retention is always on the to-do list and a top priority,” Pate said.
New CEO Fuller said U.S. Xpress has opened five or six driving schools over the
past year or so. Those allow the company to train new employees on its curriculum and equipment, he said.
Fuller said a recent strong national jobs report showed a large jump in construction positions, a sector with which trucking companies compete for workers.
“We could feel that,” he said. “We saw a significant downturn in the number of applications.”
In the planned White House meeting, Fuller said industry execs plan to express concerns about the public-private partnerships President Donald Trump has cited in his push for new infrastructure spending of up to $1 trillion.
Fuller said there are worries that the public-private strategy will lead to a lot of toll roads as there are efforts to recoup investments.
In his fiscal 2018 budget proposal released Thursday, President Trump is proposing to cut the budget for the U.S. Department of Transportation by 12.7 percent from $18.6 billion this year to $16.2 billion next year.
Fuller said if transportation taxes are raised, those ought to go to fund road and bridge improvements. Also, he said, the federal fuel tax ought to be indexed to inflation.
Fuller said the same goes at the state of Tennessee level, where Gov. Bill Haslam has proposed increased gasoline and diesel taxes.
Looking ahead for U.S. Xpress, Pate said the company is having “a decent year, though the market has been “a little soft.”
“It was last year as well — too much capacity and not enough demand,” she said.
Fuller said he’d like to see the nation’s gross domestic product rise closer to 3 percent growth, which increases demand for trucking services.
“There are positive signs in the economy,” he said. “We need that momentum to continue.”