Pacer President Mike Driggers is people person with trucking in his blood

By LYNDON FINNEY
The Trucker Staff

3/16/2008

DeSOTO, Texas — Try and reach Mike Driggers in his office at Pacer Transport and you might not find him there.

Chances are he’s somewhere else in the building or out on the lot, talking with drivers and employees.

It’s part of his management philosophy and style, something the long-time trucker and now company president learned from his father.

“The lessons that I’ve learned throughout my career, and it was really taught by my father: it’s hard to get anything done without people,” Driggers said. “The reality of it is, the individuals you have working for you are the ones who are going to get the job done, and they’re the ones that need to understand very clearly the why’s, the how-to’s and the what-for’s. You have to go beyond ‘just do this.’ If you take the time to establish meaningful goals and objectives with them, and explain what the end game is, you can be pretty successful at running a company.”

There’s a very high probability that Driggers, who was born and raised in nearby Dallas, also learned a lot through first-hand experience.

After all, he notes proudly, “I’m a product of truckers.”

His dad was a truck driver and his grandfather was a diesel mechanic.

“My dad moved from driving into management and ultimately went to work for a heavy-haul company,” Driggers said. “As a result, I was exposed to the freight docks and that kind of thing. “As a young person, I migrated into trucking and it stuck. I’ve been in the business since 1979. I was born and raised in Dallas. Dad worked for Western Gillette then Sullivan Transfer Co., which is a trade show and heavy-haul company, for the last 25 years of his working career.”

When he headed off to college at the University of Texas at Dallas, Driggers said he was like most young students, looking for a career that would provide some level of excitement and different situations on a day-to-day basis.

He’d spent a lot of time with his dad, so you might say that trucking had the edge up on career choices.

“Truck driving, when dad was driving and before deregulation, was a really good middle-class job,” Driggers said. “It was a profession that was very well respected during that day and time. So I was attracted to it. It provided me an opportunity to apply my education and provide a good living for my family. I obviously have been blessed to be able to do that. I think we, the trucking industry, still have a long way to go in terms of attracting talent into this industry. I don’t think a lot of people in the business world understand the network behind the industry. When I introduce myself to people, whether I’m clad in a coat and tie or an open collar, they ask me how long I’ve been driving.”

So it was that about three months before he graduated college in 1979 with a degree in business management that Driggers went to work for Lee Way Motor Freight, an LTL carrier in Dallas, where his first job was as a bill clerk.

“I found it a little ironic that I spent four years in college and became a clerk,” he said, but quickly added, “I have to say, it was some of the most valuable experience I’ve had, because I had the opportunity to see at the grass-roots level how freight moves through the system, not only physically, but electronically as well.”

Driggers stayed in the LTL business for about six years, and then moved into truckload as a regional sales manager for Poole Truck Lines, a company owned by IU International, from which  Landstar was spun.

From there, he went to work for Burlington Motor Carriers, spending six years there and rising to the position of vice president of terminal operations.

“I was first located in Albany, Ga. (while there he earned a master’s degree in business administration), where I held the position of vice president and general manager,” he said. “When Burlington consolidated and merged four or five companies together in Daleville, Ind., I moved there to take on a role in the merging of the carriers.”

He left Burlington to work for a small company in Texas called Dalworth Trucking Co. which specialized in 57-foot regional service in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Colorado.

“That company was previously owned by the individual who currently owns Lane Freight,” Driggers said. “Lane Freight was about a $14-million-a-year organization when I went to work for them in October 1998. The idea was to grow the company. The wheels had fallen off of it a little bit and it wasn’t as profitable as when the current owners bought it. So over the next three and a half years we assembled a team and basically doubled the size of the company and achieved record earnings. As a result of that, the owner wanted me to take on the role of president of the holding company, which was LinkAmerica Corp. I spent the next five years in that role.”

He put his people-first strategy to good use in his first role as a company president.

“I spent a lot of time with drivers and it was kind of interesting,” he said. “At Lane and throughout my career, I enjoyed standing outside visiting with the drivers and learning about their issues. They told me more about the internal workings of my organization, how well we processed settlements; how well the maintenance department responded to their day-to-day needs; how well the safety department assisted them with log issues; or whatever the issue was.

“You know, those guys were touched by every department in the organization. What better feedback? Now certainly I had to filter some of that. But, normally, where there’s smoke there’s fire, and the drivers are a very valuable part in giving me the feedback.”

When the opportunity to become president at Pacer came, Driggers saw yet another new career opportunity.

“Pacer provided a new opportunity, a new segment in the trucking industry that I had not previously been acquainted with at any level,” he said. “I had worked with owner-operators my entire career, but what I had not done was venture into the over-dimensional, over-length, overweight, specialized platform business, which is Pacer Transport’s primary business. So that was alluring.”

Pacer Transport primarily handles over-sized, overweight and over-height loads.

“Not everything we haul fits that category because like most trucking segments ? if you compared it to a reefer carrier, which doesn’t haul refrigerated goods 100 percent of the time ? neither does Pacer [strictly carry over dimensional loads].”

But Pacer Transport’s niche is specialized flatbed where transporting wind energy products and equipment to coal-fired plants is the norm.

Being primarily a specialized carrier also has its benefits when it comes to finding and retaining drivers (the company has 500 owner-operators and 100 company drivers) who, Driggers said, take special pride in hauling specialized loads.

“There is a group of drivers who take pride in transporting this type business,” Driggers said. “At a company where I previously worked we had a flatbed operation. We found the drivers had a certain amount of pride associated with hauling a piece of machinery ? whether it was for farming or construction ? with a step-deck, as opposed to just being a commodity hauler. But it takes a special kind of guy or gal who will do it, because when it’s cold outside and you’re out there chaining and binding and booming and the wind’s blowing, and the sleet’s hitting you on the top of the head and down the back of your neck, it’s still got to be tied down. Because we are specialized the pay is normally better.”

That pride is also part of a good corporate culture at Pacer Transport, Driggers noted.

“The people here in the general offices are a great, close-knit group,” he said. “They strive to help one another in terms of how to move a shipment, in terms of dealing with customer issues. As far as our drivers are concerned, we have a group of million-mile drivers. We have an agent’s committee who tells us about things we need to change or address. Really, it’s a very positive culture. I think we have a very high morale and there is very little turnover.”

Driggers said Pacer Transport was heading for the $200 million mark in annual revenue and still growing.

“The main thing is, along the way we want to be sure and maintain the culture that’s been established here, improve profits and continue to create opportunities for our associates, whether they are an employee or an independent contractor.

“I like the trucking business. I’ve been in it for 29 years this September. I like being around people. I enjoy watching people succeed more than anything else. When I share results with a group and talk about how to improve, and they go take action, there’s not much bigger reward than that.”

Like father like son.