Robert Low creates strong feeling of family at Prime Inc.

By LYNDON FINNEY
The Trucker Staff

10/10/2007

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — The three visitors arrived at Springfield an hour ahead of the scheduled appointment with Robert Low, president and founder of Prime Inc.

Exiting the highway and turning onto a narrow city street, they almost passed the nondescript visitor’s entrance to the company’s sprawling complex just southwest of the busy intersection of Interstate 44 and U.S. Highway 65.

Winding through the grounds, they finally reached the entrance to the main building, which is surrounded by freshly cut, deep green grass, and lush landscape features, the handiwork of a Prime employee who volunteers her services to save some of the money Prime was paying to outside vendors (she now divides her time between landscaping duties and her other responsibilities).

Walking in the front door, the three were greeted by two receptionists who were handling a busy telephone system. No “push one for …., push two for …, push three for” at Prime.

Behind and to the right of the operators was an open office door, probably an office manager or administrative assistant, one of the visitors thought.

“Since you’re here early, let’s take a tour of the facilities,” the host to the visitors said. “You can leave your cases in Mr. Low’s office.”

The host took the cases and sat them in just inside Low’s office.

The one just behind the receptionists’ desk [where available to anyone and everyone is a sheet of paper that is in reality a scorecard of how Prime — a privately-held company — is doing financially].

The one with the open door.

The one with the chair that’s visible from the main entrance.

The one with the door that stays open unless Low is in a meeting.

The first tour stop was the full size basketball court in the company’s Millennium Building that offers drivers and employees alike access to amenities of a small city — a cafeteria, aerobic equipment, a weight room, personal fitness trainers, a small movie theatre, a dozen or so showers and an equal number of “hotel” type rooms [available at no cost for up to eight hours], a certified day care center and a day Spa [including a massage therapist], a hair solon for men and women [including manicure and pedicure services] and a company store stocked with clothing and other goods with the Prime logo.

Oh, and guess who was playing basketball with a group of employees?

Yep, it was Low, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, sweating just like everyone else.

The office location, the “scorecard,” the Millennium Building, the interaction with fellow employees … it’s all part of a successful effort to portray himself and the company as open and accessible, Low would say later during an interview in his office [conducted mostly with the door open].

And, no doubt, a way to remind himself every day that it was a group of dedicated and courageous drivers and employees who stuck with him through a period in the early 1980s when his company struggled through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Raised on a farm in Missouri, Low owned his own cattle and actually aspired to one day to own a business.

“I didn’t have any idea I would wind up in the trucking business, but I had those kind of [business] aspirations,” he said. “I had my own cattle and my own hog operation.”

His efforts allowed him to “get a few dollars together” and start college and to buy a truck.

“The first summer for a summer-time job, I made a down payment on a dump truck,” he said. “In retrospect, it was a blessing, but for several years there, you could have questioned the wisdom of that decision.  When I went back to school, there were driver issues, weather problems, and the dump truck wouldn’t work. The man who was driving the truck, and my dad to some extent, talked me into trading that dump truck for an over-the-road truck. My dump truck driver was an over-the-road driver at heart, so we leased on to other carriers and that’s how I got started.”

His first lease was with a reefer in Springfield, but the results weren’t good. After a while, he leased onto dry carriers, and eventually, with an additional two trucks, along with his parents, formed Prime in 1970.

The next 10 years were extremely prosperous for the new venture.

In 1973, Low joined the Marine Corp Reserve and went on active duty [“I had a low lottery number,” he recalled].

The company kept going during his time in the service, and when got out, it really took off.

“I was driving, my dad was driving, we were finding some of our own loads, working through brokers,” he said. “By that time we might have had four or five trucks. We just had exempt authority at first. Then we found some operating authority and purchased it, applied for some more and were successful in getting it. Between there and 1979 the business prospered. We did well. We operated primarily between the Ohio Valley and the West Coast with regulated products going to the West Coast and produce coming back.

“We had a long length-of-haul and we were a very productive operation. Our trucks ran 5,000 miles a week. We just grew like crazy. In those days, inflation was high, interest rates were fairly high, but you were paying back the debt with cheaper dollars than you were borrowing. Inflation was your friend in a rapid-growth environment. We literally doubled the size of the business every year—went from three to six, then 12 … that all came to an end in 1980 with deregulation and the recession and the spike in interest rates.”

The company made a net profit of $1 million in 1979, and then boom — the economy went in the tank.

“We made a million dollar net profit in 1979 — I remember it like it was yesterday — and by 1981 we couldn’t pay our bills and filed Chapter 11,” Low said. “I didn’t utilize the best judgment. We outgrew the company’s ability to withstand economic downturns in the economy and in the environment. It wasn’t so much deregulation as just the spiking of interest rates and the increase in interest expense because we had grown so rapidly, we had a lot of debt relative to our capital net worth.

“Our interest expense, our debt was all tied to the prime interest rate; our interest expense increased like $2.4 million from the 1979-80 timeframe. We’ve just gone from 150 trucks to 300 trucks and while that million profit looked large in 1979, it was gone and the die was cast. We found ourselves in Chapter 11, we had moved to Springfield and built the original building at this location in 1980 in anticipation of getting financing for it and never got the building financed.

“We were really short of cash and operating in a deficit and in Chapter 11. Being from that small town with a population of 250, it was a difficult time and a hard thing for me to accept because I’d gone from the world looking lovely in 1979 to a world looking bleak in 1981. But looking back, it was one of those experiences where I learned a lot about running a business correctly and properly and the importance of making solid financial decisions.”

It was during the Chapter 11 era that Low learned a real lesson that he’s never forgotten.

“I think that during the pendency of the [Chapter] 11 the lesson we learned that we were able to apply primarily involved our approach to our people and how you reward them appropriately, how you make them truly team members, make them owners in one way or another,” he said.

“During that time we developed the concept of the driver as an independent contractor in an ownership-like situation with the truck where he was responsible for the fuel, and he’s responsible for certain fixed costs. You know, you treat your own vehicle better than you do a rental car. If the driver is responsible for the fuel, he operates a little more efficiently than if it is the company’s fuel. We learned those lessons of necessity during Chapter 11. Again, it was a tough time but you wouldn’t take a million for any such experience.”

The independent contractor concept was born out of absolute necessity, Low said.

“After Chapter 11, we couldn’t afford company trucks,” he said. “At the time there was the investment tax credit. We approached some high income individuals and offered them a program where they were investors in the truck and we matched them up with a driver and came up with a division of revenue, or profit-sharing program, but that profit was all contingent on the truck making a profit and the investor was tied to that. Through that experience we really learned how to manage trucks as individual units and how to tie the driver to the profit of the individual unit.”

After Chapter 11, Low made sure the company grew at a modest rate and looked for more ways to make his drivers and employees feel a part of a team effort.

“Growth is not necessarily your friend in this business because [of] the capital required and the complexity of operating a truck line,” he said. “It’s a very people-dependent business and you have to bring your management along to match your growth.

“So talking about some of the first things we did, we contained ourselves from a growth perspective; we made sure we had the people and the systems to keep the company and our debt under control.”

One of the important lessons the company took to heart was an offshoot of the individual driver as a proft center and participant in the profitability of the truck.

“We took that same mentality and applied it to every individual in the building.” Low said. “We’re privately held; [we] never really aspired to be a public company, but recognized the stock option, the ownership and growth of the individual within the company is a powerful thing, so we developed systems where we could put each individual in an ownership-like situation with their job or position.

“What we did was create a compensation package that mimicked that and we still have. Our folks are really tied to their individual contributions to the company’s success and to some component of the company’s bottom line. So we developed those types of compensation packages. We have great managers and sales people, many of them who came on during the Chapter 11.

“How we got them hired was telling them ‘here’s an approach to compensation. We’re really going to measure your work. Incentive-based compensation now is more popular than it was in the mid ’80s, so we had something to offer: if we’re successful, here’s how we are going to pay you and if we’re not, your compensation is going to be modest, but it’s up to you. That’s a powerful motive when it makes a difference to people in their incomes and what they can do for their families, it makes a difference.”

Today, Low still points to his people as the most unique aspect of Prime.

“We have a great group of folks. That may be a relatively common answer to that question, but I think our results, what we’ve achieved here coming from literally underneath the bankruptcy court to achieve a certain level of success. It took great people and most of them are still here. We have some good young ones coming on. We have a company culture that rewards performance and success. It’s probably not the easiest place to work because we are really measuring contributions. Sometimes things happen in business and life and get in the way of achieving all we’d like to. But this group of managers, I’m very proud of them. I would say they are unique.”

It’s also a pay-for-performance model that Low says offers independent contractors the most leverage on potential for earnings.

“Now everyone is not a superstar so everyone may not achieve superior financial results,” he said. “But at Prime, drivers are paid an actual percentage of the revenue opposed to just revenue-per-mile in a system where the drivers’ interests are really aligned with the interest of the company. So I think the financial aspects of our operation are very attractive. [If I were a driver considering Prime], I would look beyond the lip service — you know, we like our drivers, we appreciate our drivers.  Where’s the tangible evidence of that? “You toured our building and could see the driver amenities. You get a feel for the company culture. I think that we show our drivers how we feel about them by what we say, what we do, what we’ve provided for our folks. Those things speak for themselves.”

Just like the open office door, 25 feet from the main entrance and plainly visible to any and all.