Byrd Takes Reins as Chairman of Federation

This story appears in the Oct. 28 print edition of Transport Topics.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.— Bulldog Hiway Express CEO Philip Byrd Sr. started his business career in lumber, the industry in which his father and grandfather worked. But in 1980, when Georgia-Pacific Corp. asked him to move to its headquarters in Atlanta, Byrd decided to get another job because he could not bear to leave his beloved home in St. George, S.C.

Byrd turned briefly to a nearby trucking company before switching to Bulldog, where he celebrated his 30th anniversary this month.

But now, his involvement with American Trucking Associations as the federation’s 69th chairman promises to keep him on the road and away from St. George and his company here.

Byrd is not especially comfortable talking about himself and is strongly inclined to shift the topic to deer hunting, his family, his faith and church, his company and — with great relish — trucking and its policy issues. The driver shortage, port operations and security, highway funding, CSA and safety, trucking’s economic essentiality, driver hours of service and technology get him going, and if he can have the conversation about these issues with a legislator or executive branch official, all the better.

“Those are the kind of things I want to spend my time and energy discussing publicly,” Byrd said.

“I’d enjoy deer hunting far more than going to Washington, D.C., but the seven years [in the upper ranks of ATA leadership] goes by in a snap, so we have to act and can never stop trying to bring attention to these issues,” he added.

That attitude is appreciated by his ATA colleagues.

“I had a conversation with him about overweight container shipments,” Michael Card, president of Combined Transport Inc. in Central Point, Ore., said of Byrd when some states were considering the regulation of container shipping, one of Bulldog’s specialties. “He was tremendously concerned about how this might affect the perception of our industry and the general safety of the motoring public. He really wanted to make sure states did this safely and correctly.”

Byrd’s new challenge is framed against a time of personal sadness. His elevation to chairman comes less than one month after the passing of his son, Phil Jr., following a prolonged illness, at age 34.

The younger Byrd was a fleet manager at Bulldog, having started his career there in 2001.

Card had completed his one-year term as ATA chairman at the end of the group’s Management Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, Fla., and said, “Phil has a habit of not talking a lot at ATA meetings, but when he does, he often sways the entire group. He’s very good at pinpointing the crux of an issue.”

Card, now chairman of ATA’s executive committee, added: “He’s very serious. He takes his business seriously. He takes ATA seriously, and he takes his church seriously. He’s a passionate and serious man.”

“Phil’s commitment to serve as chairman is all about the betterment of the industry and ATA, not Phil Byrd,” ATA President Bill Graves said, adding that Byrd is forceful yet diplomatic.

“Certain people have the ability to say what needs to be said — no matter how brutally honest — but still don’t offend anyone, even if it is contradictory of what was just said by another person. Phil is such a straight shooter, he can disagree with you without being disagreeable,” Graves said.

Safety has been a Byrd obsession for more than 30 years. When he left Georgia-Pacific for Santee Carriers, he became vice president of operations and safety for the flatbed and bulk hauler.

At Bulldog, the carrier proudly displays its three carrier-of-the-year awards for safety from the South Carolina Trucking Association.

Byrd works closely with his safety director of 17 years, Jerry Peterson. The two usually talk daily.

Peterson learned to focus on safety in the Navy, where he spent 18 of his 22 years in service on submarines, which can punish failures in safety with tremendous severity.

As a result, Peterson said he likes CSA, the federal Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.

“It’s one of the greatest things,” he said.

Peterson monitors Bulldog’s CSA scores frequently, using an outside vendor to help analyze and organize the data.

“We’re trying to be on the cutting edge,” he said. “When I pull up our scores, I like to see them steadily trending down, but I always show Phil if there’s an uptick that starts trending up, and we address that.”

“Safety is a high priority for him. He’s very active in SCTA’s safety program,” Peterson said of Byrd.

Byrd first became active in SCTA when he was at Santee. That’s where he met R.D. Moseley, Bulldog’s founder, owner and the man who recruited him in 1983.

“He told me, ‘Phil, I really need someone to join me and move the company forward.’ He was not an operations guy, but R.D. Moseley was a visionary. He started the company as a truck driver delivering newspapers. He told me, ‘If you team up with me, we can really make this go,’ ” Byrd said.

On his personal career plans, Byrd said, “I’ve had many opportunities to move elsewhere, but I’ll stay here until I’m called home by the good Lord.”

Today, Bulldog has annual revenue of about $50 million and an operating ratio — expenses as a percentage of revenue — of about 89. The carrier uses about 245 company drivers and has 85 to 90 other employees.

Bulldog is a truckload carrier offering intermodal, flatbed, dedicated contract carriage, heavy-haul and brokerage services, and also has a terminal in Savannah, Ga.

Byrd’s employees describe him as a good man who works tremendously hard.

“I’ve never heard him talk down to anyone. He’s extremely humble for a CEO,” said payroll manager Paula Franklin, a 20-year employee.

“It’s not an act with him. He’s truly like that, and that’s why people stay here so long — because of him. We love him because he loves us,” Franklin said.

The average tenure among Bulldog employees is 18 years.

“I don’t think we could ask for a better boss,” said office manager Tammy Garner, a 17-year company veteran. “He wouldn’t ask you to do anything that he wouldn’t do himself.”

“He works nonstop. He doesn’t stay in his office long. He gets in early and goes back to customer service and dispatch. Then he’ll do an ATA conference call and go into meetings. He’s extremely hands-on with every department, and he knows what’s going on,” she added, noting that he once brought in a tractor from his farm to help clean up the carrier’s yard after a storm.

Son Jeremy Byrd, 30, has worked at Bulldog.

“When I was in college and working at the docks, those could be all-night sessions, and he was working there with everybody else,” Jeremy said of his father. “Dad was out there strapping down lumber, so he earned the respect he got.”

Jeremy now works for Pana-Pacific selling in-cab communications by vendor Omnitracs Inc., which is being spun-off from Qualcomm Inc. He said he has found his family name to be useful.

“When I walk into fleets, they often recognize the last name and ask if I’m Phil’s son. I’m proud to have him as my father,” the younger Byrd said. In addition to Jeremy, Byrd and his wife of 36 years, Lynda, have two grandchildren.

His mother, Carolyn Hilton, still lives near the family home in St. George. His father, Edward, is long deceased.

Jeremy said his father has long been an advocate for technology in trucking.

“It’s always good to be open to evolution and change in business, and he knows that technology is a big part of that. Dad saw a long time ago that you could service customers better with technology,” Jeremy said.

Bulldog has been using in-cab communications since the 1980s, first with Motorola and then Qualcomm, Byrd said. The most dramatic application for the company came in 1997, when a Bulldog flatbed rig was stolen from a New Braunfels, Texas, motel parking lot.

Byrd tracked the vehicle to the Mexican border near Laredo, Texas. He guessed the truck went into Mexico from there, but mapping software at the time could not provide good information on the truck’s location in Mexico.

As recounted by the (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier newspaper and Transport Topics, Byrd told a driver and a Texas police officer to join with Mexican police and find the truck. They went in and found the truck on the property of a major criminal. That led to a shootout.

“I could hear the gunshots over the phone,” Byrd remembered.

Some of the parts had been stripped, so the tractor had to be towed out while the trailer was hauled out by another truck. The company also had to pay what the Mexican police called a “fee” — and Byrd called a bribe — in order to expedite the truck’s departure from Mexico. Five thousand dollars was the initial request, but Bulldog managed to settle the matter for $3,000.

Less dramatically, Byrd said he tries to use as much technology as reasonably possible and operate on a paperless basis when the option is available.

Although safety, operational efficiency and technological implementation might not thrill everyone, Byrd said he is “passionate” about running his company well and working for the general improvement of his industry.

“Supply chain management touches every human life in this country,” he explained.

Byrd said he is “deeply humbled” by the opportunity to serve as ATA chairman and wants to help other trucking company executives because a number of past ATA chairmen have been generous in offering guidance earlier in his career.

One person Byrd will miss during his tenure is driver Rick Whittle.

Byrd said his “greatest moment in trucking” came when Whittle was named to America’s Road Team for 2007 and 2008, and the two of them stood on stage at MC&E in 2007.

Whittle was so proud of his Road Team service that after he died from cancer in June 2012 at 53, his family buried him in his captain’s uniform.

“My goal as ATA chairman,” said Byrd, “will be to serve this industry with the same enthusiasm, vigor, love and dedication as my predecessors and Rick Whittle have.”