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This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.
Johnnie Bryan Hunt, eponymous founder of J.B. Hunt (NASDAQ: JBHT), was, like so many Depression-era children, a jack-of-many-trades. He picked cotton, harvested grain, sold lumber, auctioned livestock, sold lawn sod, and drove a truck. He was a handy soul, inventing a rice hull press and designing a unique poultry truck.
It was the rice hulls that would be the start of J.B. Hunt. J.B. came up with the concept of using rice hulls for chicken bedding. He and a partner used the rice hull business as seed money to buy five trucks and seven trailers and in 1969 started J.B. Hunt Transport. Today the company operates 11,000 trucks and about 47,000 trailers and containers, though its founder died in 2006 -- in time to see his little transport business become the largest publicly-traded trucking company in the world.
It's fitting that J.B. Hunt, which made its start on the profit earned from chicken farmers, should be based in rural Arkansas -- the land of poultry. Lowell, Arkansas is a tiny town, made up of only about 5,000 residents, so J.B. Hunt is a big force. With 16,000 employees, the company could triple the town's size based on its payroll alone.
Be sure to check out more Big Company, Small Town posts.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-23-2008 @ 9:51AM
Colin Coxall said...
I have travelled for business and pleasure throughout the U.S. in over half the states. I have always admired the the drivers of J.B. Hunt. They are carefull and courteous and I have never been subjected to the often bad road manners of so many truckers who think they own the roads. I truely can only remember a couple of incidents where a J.B. Hunt truck was speeding excessively.
6-23-2008 @ 11:06AM
mantony216 said...
have you noticed that 3-4 of the largest companys are in NW AR..
6-23-2008 @ 2:02PM
daisy said...
do not work for this company. it used to be a good company, but now they hire you and you might make 600 dollars a month. the management just blows off the drivers and continually hires more suckers. guess they don´t have to pay out much in benefits this way.
6-24-2008 @ 12:08AM
Jim said...
I worked for JB Hunt from 1990 until 1996 and those were some of the happiest years of my life. Good company to work for...
6-29-2008 @ 3:49PM
wayne said...
Daisy, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I have been with J.B. Hunt for ten years as a driver, and I make a nice average middle class living at it. Just the other day I met a co worker that hired on the same week I did, almost ten years ago. He has been single and unattached for the last ten years. He told me in the last ten years he's been able to put over a quarter of a million dollars in the bank.
I like working here. Once you've been around a few years, the corporate people in Lowell act like they are the ones working for you. The safety culture is top-notch. They want safe drivers, and aren't hesitant about getting rid of drivers who don't meet their standards.
Mr. Hunt, who I've never met, was a business genius. Trucking companies are shutting the doors because of the fuel prices. Jevic inc just shut their doors, with over 2,000 power units they were a big company to fall. Back in the 80's Mr. Hunt had the vision of buying intermodal trailer units to get his freight on the railroad instead of competing with them. This move made our company economically solid today. While other trucking companies are bleeding cash, our rail division is carrying us through this bad period. I know I'm at the right place working here.