O&S President Elected Mayor

By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the April 27 print edition of Transport Topics.

James O’Neal, president of O&S Trucking Inc., has been elected mayor of Springfield, Mo.

O’Neal, who took 61% of the vote in the April 7 election, told Transport Topics he expected his trucking experience to be of great use during his two-year term as the top elected official in the city of 175,000.

“It’s much like running a business,” he said.

O’Neal is a current vice president at large of American Trucking Associations and a past chairman of the Truckload Carriers Association.

O’Neal founded O&S Trucking as Ozarks Truck Brokerage in 1981, and today the truckload carrier operates a fleet of 400 tractors and nearly 800 trailers.

“I can’t stress enough how my experience with American Trucking Associations and Truckload Carriers Association and growing and building a biz has prepared me to do what I think is an important job right now,” O’Neal said.

That job is to maintain the economy of Springfield, he said.

“We have a strong economic engine, even in this recession,” he said, but the city has challenges that he and the nine-member city council need to address.

“We have a lot of federal stimulus money headed our way that will help us promote job growth,” O’Neal said, adding that unfunded liabilities of the pension funds for the city’s police and fire departments were another issue facing the city.

“It’s a pretty large issue financially because of the downturn of the market,” he said, which could lead to an increase in the sales tax through a referendum.

“My hope is we can find a way to resolve that without doing that,” O’Neal said.

In his first weeks in office, however, O’Neal said the biggest challenge was balancing his professional life at O&S Trucking and his elected responsibilities with the city. “It’s been a whirlwind . . .  it is really nearly a full-time job. I’m trying to get myself established in a schedule and a routine,” he said.

“It’s not easy, it’s more about time management and budgeting and prioritizing what you do and where you go,” O’Neal added. “It is easy to be consumed.”

A city councilman 20 years ago, O’Neal said he was inspired to run for mayor after serving as TCA’s chairman in 2007.

“I just completed my service as chairman of the Truckload Carriers Association, and I have a really good management team [at O&S] doing a real fine job,” he said. “I really felt like I had the time and the desire to serve here.”

ATA President Bill Graves, a former two-term governor of Kansas, praised O’Neal’s leadership.

“Jim O’Neal has proved himself to be an outstanding leader in our industry,” said Graves. “His many talents will serve the people of Springfield very well.”

O’Neal said he had no plans to pursue higher office after his term as mayor.

“I really do not have an aspiration beyond local government. I’ve served here before, and it’s unique in that it’s not partisan and it’s not paid,” he said.

“Part of the way our local government is made up . . . to me, it is more closely akin to volunteering for service and leadership in ATA than it is to be considered a steppingstone for state representative, state Senate or anything like that.”