story by Kim Souza
ksouza@thecitywire.com
J.B. Hunt Transport Services began as a small carrier of rice hulls from eastern Arkansas across the state to the burgeoning poultry industry in Northwest Arkansas in the late 1960s. Founders Johnnie Bryan Hunt and Johnelle Hunt, began the company with five trucks and seven trailers and lost money in the first few years of business.
GRIT & GUTS
In 1969, Hunt turned the family business around relocating to Lowell and putting his partner and wife Johnelle in charge of collections. Johnelle Hunt unabashedly has shared how she would call the wives and mothers of those customers who owed them money because that was the quickest way to get the delinquent invoices paid.
Hunt took the company public in 1983 after it began to profit on the heels of industry deregulation. By 1989 Hunt began to partner with Sante Fe Railroad, taboo at the time, given the two parties were also competitors. That partnership evolved over time into the carrier’s Intermodal segment and is now a widely used strategy across the transport industry.
PROFITS ABOUND
In 2014, logistics giant J.B. Hunt Transport posted net profits of $374.79 million on revenue of $6.165 billion. The Intermodal segment comprises about 60% of the company’s total revenue at this time.
Transport Topics ranked J.B. Hunt Transport as the No. 2 largest logistics company in North America for 2015 based on net revenue. UPS Supply Chain Services ranked No.1, edging out Hunt by a margin of $425 million in net sales last year. By roughly $500 million Hunt ranked above Ryder Supply Chain Solutions and C.H. Robinson Worldwide, No. 3 and No. 4, respectively.
FAMILY TIES
Johnelle Hunt remains the largest shareholder of the company with 19.353 million shares or 16.6% of the outstanding stock, according to the recent Proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Her stock holdings have a street value of $1.781 billion as of Tuesday (April 21). She retired from her board seat in early 2008 at age 75 which was the cap age for directors according to company bylaws.
Bryan Hunt, 56 and son of the founders, remains a director for the company in a seat he has held since 1991. Bryan Hunt is not a majority stock holder in the company, though his annual pay for the board seat is $158,000, which $140,000 was paid in stock last year.
POLITICAL SPEND
OpenSecrets.com records indicate J.B. Hunt Transport Services made political contributions to individual campaigns totaling $78,599 since 1994. The company does not appear to be active in political lobbying circles given the entire industry contributed in excess of $135.7 million last year to political campaigns.
Hunt’s (corporate) political contributions peaked in 2004 at $20,000. Contributions have declined from $17,000 in 2010, to $10,000 in 2012 to $7,000 in 2014, according to OpenSecrets.com.
SAFETY RECORD
As a carrier and freight broker J.B. Hunt Transport is regulated by the Federal Motor Coach Safety Administration that routinely inspects rigs and investigates accidents involving the company and its drivers.
J.B. Hunt Transport has 14,540 drivers who logged more than 997.858 million miles in 2014, according to the FMCSA website. The company earned a satisfactory rating as of February 2015.
The carrier was involved in 25 fatality accidents over the the past 24 month period. There were 319 other accidents that resulted in non-fatal injuries. There were 621 trucking crashes that resulted in the rigs being towed. Since April 20, 2013, J.B. Hunt Transport drivers were involved in 965 total crashes, according to the FMCSA data.
As a matter of comparison: Schneider National Carriers with 12,480 drivers logging 1.081 billion miles annually has had 935 crashes in the past 24 months. There were 30 fatalities, 261 injury-related with 644 crashes that involved the rig being towed.