The board of directors at J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. on Thursday appointed the president of one of its trucking divisions to lead the company next year and said President and Chief Executive Officer Kirk Thompson will step down to become board chairman.
The Lowell-based transportation business said thaton Jan. 1, John N. Roberts III, 46, will replace Thompson as president and chief executive officer. The company added that Chairman Wayne Garrison willbecome an acting director.
Thompson, 57, who is a certified public accountant,joined the company in 1973. He was elected president and chief executive officer in 1987.
“With the Company’s strategic positioning well established and operational execution at such a high level, this is the right time for me to step back from the day-to-day operations,” Thompson said in a news release.
The corporate carrier that operates a 9,100-truck fleet reported a 31 percent increase inthird-quarter profit and an 18 percent increase in revenue.
“They have a pretty strong core of senior management in that company and a segmented approach to the industry and freight movement that Kirk created several years ago,” said Lane Kidd, president of the Arkansas Trucking Association, whose membership includes J.B. Hunt Transport. “It’s turned out to be an efficient and wise wayto move freight.”
During Thompson’s tenure, J.B. Hunt became a multifaceted transportation services company, instead of just a truckload carrier, the business said in a news release.
Revenue grew from $286 million in 1987 to a projected $3.8 billion in 2010, according to the news release.
Garrison, 57, joined J.B. Hunt in 1976 as a plant man-ager and moved into executive offices shortly thereafter. He became chief executive officer in 1987 and has been chairman of the board since 1995.
Roberts, president of J.B.. Hunt’s dedicated-contractservices division, will be the fourth chief executive officer in the company’s history. He assumes an immediate board seat and is credited with growing the division’s revenue from $150 million in 1997 to more than $1 billion. Dedicatedcontract freight travels in the same delivery routes, unlike with truckload freight that can have variation.
Roberts has been with J.B. Hunt since 1989. He graduatedfrom the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a degree in business administration in 1988. He started with J.B. Hunt immediately thereafter as a manager trainee.
“The reputation of John Roberts is that he’s outstanding in the areas of selling and marketing,” said Kidd.
The carrier said Nick Hobbs, a senior vice president of operations for its dedicatedcontract-services division, has been promoted to president of the division.
J.B. Hunt gave no indication that a transition was about to occur, Kidd added, “but it makes sense that it would occur the way that it is” with the company selecting one of its divisional presidents.
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Business, Pages 23 on 10/29/2010