Covenant Transportation Celebrates 30 Years in Business
A carnival was gearing up in the tractor lot outside Covenant Transportation Group headquarters. A band tuned its instruments. Funnel cake batter dropped into searing grease.
And David Parker, chairman of the trucking company he founded in 1986, was busy at work. But he welcomed the chance to talk a few minutes about the significance of the milestone.
"Thirty years," he said. "I'm 30 years older."
He flashed a big smile and leaned back in his chair. Parker was in his 20s when he started Covenant. Longhaul trucking pioneer Clyde Fuller raised him. Parker came up in trucking and discovered a talent for the work. He and his stepbrother, Max Fuller, worked for their father.
That was in the 1970s and '80s. In the mid-'80s, Clyde Fuller left his company, Southwest Motor Freight, to his boys. They eventually sold the company.
After the sale, Parker, a devout Christian, felt a calling to start Covenant Transport.
So in 1986, he did. His half-brother Max Fuller, along with Pat Quinn, started U.S. Xpress Enterprises the same year in Chattanooga. All three inherited trucks from Southwest Motor Freight.
Parker and his wife, Jacqueline, also took on millions of dollars of debt to start Covenant.
"We were 28 years old when we started this sucker," Parker said.
Thirty years later, Covenant operates 3,000 tractors. It's more than 100 times the tractors Parker had when he started.
Covenant ranks No. 46 and U.S. Xpress ranks No 18 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.
He said the idea of operating the company for 30 years "never even crossed my mind" in the beginning.
And there's a lot more to it these days. Federal regulations are moving trucking away from the wide-open ways of the past and toward a future ruled by metrics. Drive this long, but no longer. Go this fast, but no faster.
Even the driver pay structure may change soon.
"There's no question the government is trying to push the way we pay our drivers," CTG President Joey Hogan said.
Most companies pay truckers per mile, but change is in the air. There is talk of mandating an industry-wide hourly pay structure.
The government is "trying to push an hourly wage," said Hogan. "I think they're going to be successful in the next five years," he said.
But Covenant will tackle these issues as they come. The company, Hogan said, is a problem solver.
For instance, Covenant is developing a high school and college-age driver recruiting program. Hogan said it could become a shared tool with other companies. He said Covenant's focus now, more than ever, is on finding good people.
