INDIANAPOLIS — Pilot Flying J CEO Jimmy Haslam said he was “absolutely not aware” of any alleged scheme by employees to underpay customers of a fuel rebate program that is now the subject of a federal criminal investigation.
Haslam said he had no knowledge of the situation until FBI agents raided the company’s Knoxville, Tenn., headquarters last month. Since then, Pilot Flying J has been sued by several trucking companies.
“It looks like — and we’re approximately three weeks into our investigation — approximately 250 of those manual rebate companies had some type of adjustment,” Haslam, head of the nation’s largest travel-center operator, said here Thursday at a legal conference that included more than 375 trucking executives, including American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves.
It marked the first time Haslam has addressed the industry directly about the investigation, though he has contacted individual clients about reimbursements.
He said his company currently has contracts with roughly 5,000 customers, and of that total, about 400 received manual rebates.
Pilot Flying J is ending the manual rebate program and is fully investigating any wrongdoing, Haslam said, adding that not all of the adjustments were necessarily fraudulent.
For additional coverage, see the May 20 print edition of Transport Topics.
