Charles ‘Shorty’ Whittington Takes ATA Reins
By Eric Miller, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the Oct. 13 print edition of Transport Topics.
It’s another sticky-hot summer day in Grammer, Ind., population 138, and the owner of the only business in town is talking a mile a minute, his twangy Hoosier voice drowning out the eerie silence of the corn and soybean fields surrounding a gravel lot filled with rows of shiny tank trailers.
This tiny south-central Indiana town is the headquarters for Grammer Industries — a relatively small, but handsomely profitable, hazardous-materials carrier — and the place where its proud owner, Charles “Shorty” Whittington, hangs his hat — not to mention the essence of his being.
To his neighbors, Grammer is a great place to raise a family but a tough place to find something to do on a Saturday night. To him, Grammer is a state of mind.
“I love this little town,” he said with a big smile on his face. “I grew up here and don’t ever want to leave.”
Whittington, a highly successful trucker and entrepreneur, and his wife of 40 years, Ro, could relax just about anywhere they want.
“But sitting here on that damn porch with my feet propped up,” Whittington said, “it doesn’t get any better than that.”
Of course, now that Whittington has taken the reins as 64th chairman of American Trucking Associations, he won’t be spending as much time in Grammer. Now, the man described by one former associate as “an Indiana country gentleman with a Wall Street mentality,” will be crisscrossing the country in his company’s six-seat Socata TBM 700 turboprop aircraft giving speeches, talking to politicians and picking the brains of trucking’s brightest.
Last week, Whittington was formally installed as ATA’s new chairman. He succeeds Ray Kuntz, chief executive officer of Watkins & Shepard Trucking, Helena, Mont.
“A lot of people think ATA is for the big guys,” Whittington said. “ATA is for transportation. It’s for the big, it’s for the little and the in-between.”
Kuntz said Whittington’s small trucking and agricultural background will bring a fresh perspective to a job that is most commonly occupied by executives with medium to large trucking firms.
“When you grow up in small-town America like Shorty did, you have to do everything from washing the truck, to driving it, to meeting with the mayor,” Kuntz said. “So Shorty has a history of dealing with everybody.”
ATA President Bill Graves said he expects the new chairman’s transition to be “seamless,” but that Whittington will inherit some weighty issues, including the 2009 highway reauthorization bill.
“Shorty has really rolled up his sleeves and has been working side by side with Ray Kuntz,” Graves said. “So Shorty has a very thorough understanding of all of the outstanding issues confronting the industry and ATA.”
As ATA chairman, Whittington will have less time for family, friends and the business he has nurtured since he bought his first truck more than 30 years ago. He’ll miss the simple pleasures he holds dearest — things like cooking steaks for close friends or for his wife’s local ladies’ garden club and hosting grand events inside the Whittingtons’ giant renovated barn, affectionately known as the “party barn.”
No doubt, there will be fewer trips to the family houseboat, “The Relaxer,” docked near Decatur, Ala., and the 42-foot cruiser, “Sundancer,” anchored on Lake Cumberland near Albany, Ky.
Although Whittington is viscerally tied to the dirt he’s walked on all his 62 years, he’s also passionate about his trucking business, an operation that specializes in getting farmers the fertilizer they depend on to produce bountiful crop yields each spring and fall.
Whittington’s tank truck firm transports mostly anhydrous ammonia — a caustic and hazardous compound used for foodstuffs and fertilizer — but also dabbles in moving liquefied petroleum gases, carbon dioxide, nitric acid and bulk liquid corrosive hazardous waste throughout the Midwest.
It’s a big job toting the ATA banner and the wishes of its membership, and Whittington said he’s humbled to serve in a post that is most often occupied by much higher profile trucking industry executives.
To keep a finger on the pulse of the trucking industry, he said he plans to travel to meet with half of the nation’s state trucking associations and attend a dozen or more ATA and other industry conferences.
He’ll also be a force in shaping ATA policy. Whittington said his top priorities will include ATA’s sweeping sustainability initiative and the quest to get the trucking industry its fair share of the 2009 transportation reauthorization pie that will be sliced up in Congress in the upcoming months.
Despite Whittington’s impressive success in both his professional and personal life, sometimes it seems as if Whittington has to pinch himself to believe that for the next year he’ll be the face of trucking.
“I keep telling myself that 90% of the trucking firms in the U.S. have five or less trucks,” he said. (Grammer Industries employs about 35 drivers and operates roughly 200 trucks in peak agricultural seasons.)
Whittington is passionate about, and a big believer in, the future of the trucking industry in general, and he is excited that he can be a credible voice for the “little guys,” because, frankly, he considers himself one of them.
Yet, he knows the next year will present him with some challenges. For some time now, the trucking industry has been facing difficult times with overcapacity, slower freight volumes and rising diesel prices, giving shippers the upper hand in pricing.
Whittington hopes to help convince Congress to support ATA issues, such as increasing the maximum allowable weight for trucks.
“There’s going to be some heartburn in the industry over the 97,000-pound issue,” Whittington said.
It’s been a long journey to the top for Whittington, who began his career working for his father in the family’s farming and grain elevator business as a kid in the 1960s.
Whittington may be a good old boy now, but he started out as a bit of a boy wonder. His life working on the farm began at age 6, when he worked on the fields. By 12, he was supervising crop cultivation crews, and by 23, he realized the family needed to buy its own truck to haul the family’s crops to market.
Before that, Whittington got a bachelor’s degree in agriculture from Purdue University, the same year he was the Purdue mascot, “Purdue Pete.”
It was in 1977 that Whittington established what has since become Grammer Industries.
He said it didn’t take him long to discover there was more money to be made in the hauling business than the growing business.
While trucking is Whittington’s passion, it’s not his only business. His current holdings include property companies from Florida to Michigan, equipment sales and leasing, specialized tanker fleets and terminal operations throughout the Midwest. In 2006, he opened Integrity Biofuels, a production facility in Morristown, Ind., that converts soybean oil to biodiesel fuel.
He owns a recreational vehicle park in Ruskin, Fla., and also recently purchased a large hangar at the Columbus, Ind., airport. He’s hoping to turn the mammoth structure into an automotive parts distribution center for the new Honda plant coming soon to Columbus.
Whittington’s daughter, Kristin, works for Precision Agriculture in Hope, Ind.
His son, John Whittington, vice president of Grammer Industries, runs the biodiesel operation and early next year will travel to Florida to expand Grammer’s tank-truck operations.
Business is booming, the senior Whittington said, since the railroads began reducing their transporting of some hazardous materials by raising their rates.
“We’ve got so many balls in the air,” Whittington said. “Our increase in business has just been phenomenal. I’m almost embarrassed to say we’re doubling our fleet.”
These varied life experiences tell the story of a man who is a puzzling mix of complexity and simplicity.
Whittington is a wealthy man, but he doesn’t have a savings account.
Although he’s the primary owner and chief executive officer of an array of business ventures, his business card identifies him simply as a “transportation specialist.”
He’s been seated eyeball-to-eyeball with some powerful people, including the current President Bush, but, truth be told, he would rather spend his time off relaxing with his more down-to-earth Indiana neighbors.
John Conley, president of the National Tank Truck Carriers, who has worked with Whittington for years, has suggested that underneath Whittington’s good old boy facade is a smart, sophisticated, driven businessman with a proven track record.
“He’ll bring a little different flair to ATA,” Conley said, “but you’ll never have to wonder what he really means or what he’s really thinking because he’ll just tell you.
“He can play, ‘Aw, shucks,’ but he’s been to China and India. He can be dressed up.”
Paul Stalknecht, chief executive officer of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America, worked with Whittington for several years while Stalknecht served as ATA’s senior vice president for federation relations.
“Shorty’s a unique individual,” Stalknecht said. “He has a flair and unique passion for everything he does.
“He’s a trucker’s trucker. When he sinks his teeth into something, he eats the whole steak.”
Stalknecht described Whittington as a “visionary.”
“He’s very diplomatic, but yet he has a very strong backbone,” Stalknecht said. “He knows what he wants, he knows what the right thing to do is, and he’s a very good consensus builder.”
Whittington’s trucking and other business interests have brought him some of the trappings of financial success.
Yet, his approachable, easygoing manner seems to belie his wealth. He’s always been the same old Shorty, friends and associates said.
Whittington admits he is known to occasionally show up late for an appointment or maybe talk a little too much. But, on the other hand, friends and colleagues are quick to say he’s a great listener.
“We go to meetings together all the time,” said Ron Dowen, a longtime Grammer Industries employee. “I’m always amazed with his ability to pick up on all the good ideas. I miss many of the ideas, even though I’ve been in the same meeting with him.”
Russell Laird, executive director of ATA’s agricultural and food transporters conference, said Whittington “works hard and plays hard.”
“Anybody who knows him knows that,” Laird said.
Whittington’s also got a sense of humor that he often uses to put people at ease. His identity as one of the little guys is an integral part of his what-you-see-is-what-you-get DNA. In fact, it’s the basis for one of his favorite speech icebreakers, a self-deprecating joke that brings a laugh every time and seems to suck audiences into the palm of his hand.
It goes like this: He tells the audience he spoke on the phone today with his wife and asked her if she could ever in her wildest fantasies imagine Shorty putting on a coat and tie, heading off to Washington, D.C., and standing on a podium to give a speech to a group of very important people.
The punch line: “She told me, ‘Honey, to be perfectly honest, I don’t ever recall having any wild fantasies about you.’ ”
In the end, the key to understanding Whittington is to peer into his agricultural roots, Laird said. “When you’re used to working on the land and producing something with your hands, you know that you have to work hard,” Laird said. “It creates a special sense of community. Neighbors help neighbors.”
He said the effects of growing up in a small rural town also can’t be underestimated.
“You have to get a job done and don’t always have as many re-
sources as big-city folks. So you learn to work with what you have, and that creates a strong work ethic and a sense of determination to get the job done.”
And in that environment, your word means a lot, Laird said.
Ironically, some of the things about Grammer that many people don’t like are the very things that Whittington finds attractive.
He feels both comfortable and secure in the small-town environment, he said.
And, finding something to do on a Saturday night has never been a problem for Whittington.
He relishes the simple life.
“You can be you every minute you’re here,” he said. “You don’t have to be someone you’re not.”
Photos by Tom Bartholomew
