Robert Archibald Young III

NWA Media/DAVID GOTTSCHALK - 5/29/14 - Robert A. Young, chairman of the U.S. Marshals Museum and chairman of the board for Arkansas Best Corporation, inside his office at the corporation May 30, 2014 in Fort Smith.

NWA Media/DAVID GOTTSCHALK - 5/29/14 - Robert A. Young, chairman of the U.S. Marshals Museum and chairman of the board for Arkansas Best Corporation, inside his office at the corporation May 30, 2014 in Fort Smith.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

FORT SMITH — At one point or another, Robert A. Young III has handled all the tough jobs at Arkansas Best Corp.

His father, Robert A. Young Jr., made sure he got experience in the worst duties, such as working on the freight dock, where he was responsible for proper loading of trucks, a tough job that often meant working in triple digit temperatures and returning home with soaking-wet clothes.

Young was born and raised in Fort Smith, which is where he raised his own family and led Arkansas Best, recently renamed ArcBest Corp., to great success. These days, he entertains grandchildren with trips to the farm and for duck, deer and hog hunting.

That’s not to say that Young, 73, hasn’t seen plenty of the rest of the world. Over the years, there were ritual trips to the Buffalo River, Colorado and Europe with lawyer Bill Thompson and his family.

“The best [times] were the floats on the Buffalo,” Thompson says. “Our families would … camp out on gravel shoals. They were great opportunities … to get together and get the kids away from the telephone.”

Though Young was generally a good student, his two older sisters took charge when his grades started slipping in high school, and they helped him get accepted into The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey.

Arriving at the boarding school in 10th grade, Young made friends quickly. The academic standards were more strict but he soaked up the lectures, which were taught at the college level, and before long he was earning good grades while participating in the swimming and football programs.

Young attended Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., where he developed his aptitude for math and majored in economics. The subject truly interested him and the professors were good, solid people, he said. He also learned Spanish and spent a summer studying in Guadalajara, Mexico.

He completed his degree in 1963, married his college sweetheart, Mary McRae, that summer, and spent six months on active duty in the U.S. Air Force. Young had hopes of attending law school, but his father needed him at home.

SON OF A GUN

In January 1964, Young went to work at Arkansas Best Corp., which his father had bought in 1951. Young was made supervisor of terminal operations, and managed the southern half of the system — 14 of the 28 terminals. It was a lot of responsibility for a first professional position, but he rose to the occasion.

“My dad was a great guy to work for, so different from stories I’ve heard about other people working for their dad,” Young says. “He’d tell you what he wanted the end result to be but he didn’t tell you how to get there.

“He’d come down pretty hard on me when I screwed up, but he didn’t micromanage.”

In 1965 the head of Data-Tronics, Arkansas Best’s information technology division, resigned. Young would take over, although he had no high-tech knowledge.

“[Dad] said I want you to take over the computer operations. I said, ‘Well, Dad, I don’t know anything about computers.’ ‘Well, can you learn? I want some son-of-a-gun I can count on.’”

He gained experience in computers and information technology through week-long workshops at IBM in New York, where he found himself in good company. A new generation of computers had been released that year.

When he became president of Data-Tronics Corp., his math skills and ease with his father’s leadership style helped him get off on the right foot. Other information technology personnel bounced from one company to the next with little time in between, chasing higher salary offers.

In 1967, Arkansas Best bought the National Bank of Commerce in Dallas, an operation that had a computer system in great need of attention. Young was assigned to make it run more efficiently. As senior vice president of the bank, he trained information technology personnel, handled all nonlending services, took banking courses and generally got all the training of a Master of Business Administration while on the job.

He returned to Arkansas in 1970 as vice president of finance at the age of 30 and spent three years working on credit agreements with banking partners of Arkansas Best, such as Citibank in New York.

GREW UP IN THE BUSINESS

When his father died in 1973, Young took over as president, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the firm. He was 33 years old.

“Since I was 11 years old, I worked there in the summers. I knew all the officers, I knew their strengths and weaknesses. I’d worked with them as a peer … I trusted them. They were good guys, smart guys. They didn’t need a lot of bossing. As CEO, in my opinion, the job is to make their job easier, to run interference for them,” Young says.

He knew the company intimately, although it didn’t hit him until that moment that his father had steered him into the training that made him an ideal candidate for president.

Judy McReynolds, current president and CEO of ArcBest Corp., says that, like his father, Young ran a tight ship.

“It was the most professionally run company that was a client of mine,” says McReynolds, who was director of financial reporting and taxation with P.A.M. Transportation Services, Inc., and a senior manager of Ernst & Young LLP before joining Young’s company in 1997.

When she compared Young’s company to her office environment at the time, she decided to work for Arkansas Best instead, and sought a leader and mentor in Young.

“His approach to things was something I observed and that helped me,” she says. “He’s always interested in making sure that people involved in running the business were well informed, had answers to the questions, were prepared for the next challenge.

“He was calm, purposeful, direct, but also at the same time approached it with a positive outlook.”

Young acquired a knack for hiring good people and giving them the freedom to do the job their way. Many times he’d place a tenured employee in a different department to get them out of their comfort zone and foster professional growth.

“He enables people to come to the right conclusion when talking with him or trying to gain his counsel over an issue,” she says. “Many times, whenever I have something I need to deal with … I will talk through things with him. He has an amazing way, without [using] very many words, of helping you arrive [at] the right conclusion.”

He started by phasing out truckload freight, the less efficient practice of sending a truck with only one load of freight to one location, and beginning in 1985 the company opened a terminal each week until it could serve every American community with a population of 25,000 or higher. The company opened 10 consolidating hubs, which span the country from Portland, Ore., to Carlisle, Pa., to combine freight by similar location to save resources.

Rates varied wildly in the new territory of unregulated freight (the trucking industry was deregulated in 1980), and soon rate bureaus — groups of businesses within an industry setting their own prices for products — were prohibited in the industry, too. The difference in how things were done was great enough that Young decided knowledge of past procedures was unnecessary baggage. Rather than hire an expert, he enlisted the help of someone who had no experience with rates, and it turned out to be just what the company needed.

MAN OF THE PEOPLE

Young’s investment and attention to detail have never been confined solely to Arkansas Best.

Over the years, he served as president of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, president of the board of directors for the Fort Smith Chamber of Commerce and co-chairman of its development council.

His commitment to education is manifested in his role as chairman of the board of trustees for Lyon College in Batesville, as a trustee for Southern Methodist University in Dallas and as a supporter of the Arkansas-Oklahoma Regional Education and Promotion Association.

He is also chairman of the board of trustees for the Sparks Regional Medical Center and is on the board of the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City.

He remains involved in the Boy Scouts of America and the Fort Smith Boys and Girls Club while also serving as chairman for charitable events, such as the March of Dimes and the American Cancer Society’s Great American Lock-Up.

Young is chairman of the board for the forthcoming U.S. Marshals Museum (a groundbreaking is set for September; estimated cost is $53 million). The museum will honor the home base of the marshals, who in the late 1800s oversaw Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) from Fort Smith. Young chose to invest time in the project, confident in its future economic impact on the Fort Smith area by leading the way to new business in the city’s riverfront district.

ADAPTING TO CHANGES

Young’s willingness to adapt to industry changes enabled him to continue his father’s legacy and build on it.

“He has led the company … through some very difficult times,” McReynolds says. “He had confidence in the company and looked to the future with the idea that [it] was going to be successful.

“That outlook has really stood the test.”

Young retired as head of the company and stepped into a role as chairman of the board of Arkansas Best Corp. in 2004.

During his time as president and CEO, the company grew substantially. Last year it earned $2.2 billion in revenue, and employed 11,420 people with its subsidiaries.

“I always wanted to run the company because my dad did,” Young says. “I always wanted to make him proud. I’d like to bring him back for about 15 minutes, let him see what we’ve done.”