Editorial: Patrick Quinn, Industry Leader

Patrick Quinn was a lot of different things to different people. To trucking, he was a leader.

Quinn did a lot of things during his professional life, including co-founding and co-managing what has become the third-largest truckload carrier in the nation, U.S. Xpress Enterprises, a $1.5 billion-a-year business.

But he was not content simply to make a good living in the trucking industry. Instead, Pat seemed driven to try and make the industry better.

Pat died on Dec. 13 of brain cancer at his home in Chattanooga, Tenn.

As if being a top executive at a large fleet wasn’t a demanding enough job, Pat gave freely of his “spare” time to be an active member of, and leader of, a host of industry organizations, including American Trucking Associations, the Truckload Carriers Association and the Tennessee Trucking Association.

And then he spent more than two years as a member of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission, after being appointed to that panel by then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

Whenever the industry called, it seemed, Pat was ready to lend a hand.

While serving as chairman of both TCA and ATA, Pat helped reconcile the groups after some issues had divided them.

And after serving a grueling term as ATA chairman in 2006, crisscrossing the nation on behalf of the organization and its members, Pat volunteered to serve an additional eight months after the sudden death of the man who was supposed to succeed him, C.J. “Mac” McCormick III.

Pat remained very active in ATA after his term finally expired and was the group’s treasurer at the time of his death.

One of the last times many of us saw him was at ATA’s Management Conference & Exhibition in October at Grapevine, Texas.

As Barbara Windsor, CEO of Hahn Transportation and ATA’s immediate past chairman, related, Pat told her that he was determined to attend the meeting “because that’s where his cherished friends were.” She said Pat told her it was important to him that he give the treasurer’s report during ATA’s annual meeting, and that’s just what he did.

As ATA President Bill Graves put it, “Pat Quinn was a remarkable man who devoted a tremendous amount of time and energy in support of the trucking industry he loved.”

Pat will be missed, by his family, by his company and by the industry he served so well.