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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
H-0164, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
L. Worth Harris grew up near Charlotte, North Carolina, a city that became a hub of the freight business in the early and middle of the 20th century. Harris contributed to this development, starting his own trucking company in the early 1930s shortly after graduating from business school. In this interview he describes navigating the powerful unions; shipping textiles to New York City; and ultimately selling his business rather than merging with another one in the mid-1960s. He also seeks to explain why trucks replaced trains as the region's principal transportation vehicle, and why Charlotte became the center of the freight business. This interview offers a look at the growth of an important southern business.
L. Worth Harris discusses the trucking company he started in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the early 1930s.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
. . . you know about him.
Actually, the Harrises lived in McDowell County until they moved down to Georgia for a short period of time. Then when we moved from Georgia, we moved into Forest City, North Carolina. Soon after we lived in Forest City, my father passed away at an early age.
Were the Harrises farmers as well, or what did they do?
My father was in the lumber business all his life and also did a little farming on the side. But he was primarily in the lumber business, had a sawmill.
What about his father? Do you know what they did?
His father was also in the lumber business in a small way. In fact, all of them were in a very small way, as far as that goes.
Would it be going around setting up small sawmills?
That's right. They set up small sawmills. In fact, that's why my family moved to Georgia, to try the mill business down there. Just small sawmills, and then move the lumber out.
And you were born in Eton.
Eton, Georgia, in 1908.
How many brothers and sisters did you have?
I had one brother a couple of years younger than I am, and one sister a couple of years older.
Do you remember anything about Georgia, or did you all move pretty soon after that to Forest City?
I remember very little about Georgia. Actually I've been back to see the homeplace and so forth, but I remember very little about it.
What county is that in? Do you know?
I really don't. It's not far out from Atlanta, Georgia.
In what direction?
Kind of northeast of Atlanta.
What did the old homeplace look like?
It was a nice, small home. It was a three-bedroom house, and they didn't intend to stay there a long while when they moved down there. But they did find this house and bought it, and then sold it soon after we had left there.
Do you know why your parents left and came back to North Carolina?
They weren't too happy in Georgia. He decided in Georgia to get completely out of the lumber business and move to Forest City, and my mother opened up a boarding house there and ran this for quite a few years.
And you say your father died when he was a young man?
Very young, yes. He died shortly after we got back to Forest City.
Could you talk a little bit about that?
I think it was a heart attack, although they never did fully know. He wasn't in real good health and just passed away in the night.
Were your mother and father about the same age?
My mother was a little bit younger than my father, but not much.
And you say your mother lived to be 101?
A hundred and one and nine months. She just died this past September.
In September of '80.
She lived in Forest City there. Then later on, when I got in business here, she moved to Charlotte and kept a boardinghouse here for a few years, and then she retired.
Would your early memories be those of growing up in the boardinghouse in Forest City?
Yes, sir. I remember all about that, of course. And I went to high school there in Forest City.
Who would be staying in the boardinghouse, mainly?
We had as many roomers permanently as we could take in the house, and then it was open to anyone in Forest City that wanted to go. It was just anyone that came in, actually.
Would there be, say, some schoolteachers who might be living there?
In fact, that's what she had more than anything else. The permanent people were schoolteachers, and then the other boarders just dropped in.
Maybe some salesmen coming and going?
Just various people. She ran a real nice boardinghouse there, and it was right in town, so a lot of people working in various stores and everything took their meals there regular.
Did she cook the meals, too?
She had cooks, of course, but she could; she could do anything. She did the cooking and everything else, absolutely.
Was that one of those old boardinghouses where everybody would sit down at one or two big tables and pass the food around?
That's exactly. . . . One or two big tables, and the whole thing was there. You could just help yourself, whatever you wanted.
I imagine you enjoyed that.
Yes, that was very nice. And then after she moved to Charlotte, I went to Kings Business College here. And she talked to the people at Kings Business College, and practically her boardinghouse setup here was just almost a hundred percent Kings Business College people. It was close to the college. And she kept that up until she retired.
So you went to grammar school and high school in Forest City?
In Forest City, and then took a business course.
Did your mother have any kind of sayings or special sort of things she taught you about growing up, moral teachings?
The greatest. She was a Christian lady from way back, and she held a little prayer with us each day. Then after my father passed away, I was very young, and of course we didn't have any money, but she turned over the money situation to me at a very young age. And I handled the finances, what little bit we had there, in fact as long as she lived. In her boardinghouse she handled what money she had there, but any little investments or anything else I did. And then when we finally talked her into retiring, why, the investments I had made for her I handled, and when she needed anything, of course, I started taking care of that also.
How long was it before you could finally talk her into retiring?
Had a time of doing it. She definitely did not want to retire, but I had started in business then, and it was quite a long while. I don't have those exact dates, but she kept it up for quite a long while. And finally she wasn't feeling quite as spry as she was, and she knew that we were doing all right at that time, so she finally retired and lived . . .
Was she in her sixties?
Yes, she was about sixty-four or sixty-five when she retired.
And she had run the boardinghouse all that time?
All that time. She sure had.
How big a house was this in Charlotte?
This house in Charlotte was a big house right close in town. It was a fifteen-room house. And she took care of an awful lot of people.
I guess it's no longer there.
No, it's torn down now.
In Forest City when she first started the boardinghouse, did she rent the house and then manage it?
She rented the house, and then later on we bought a little smaller house than that, but she continued the same business there, right on.
In Forest City.
In Forest City.
What about your brother and your sister? Did they go to high school there, too?
My brother went to high school there and also took a business course at Kings.
What was his name?
Delbert Harris.
What is your sister's name?
Annie Sue Cole. She was married to a Cole.
Did she go to high school?
She went to high school and also to college, graduated at Wake Forest. Then she started teaching school. Taught school until she retired.
Let me get you to go back and try to recall some of the things that your mother might have said to you about how to behave or how to work or how to live?
She said quite a few writeups(?) about that. Her greatest thing was that
hard work would not hurt anyone, but worry would kill you, and
that's what she was pretty well sold on, and
that's the way she lived all of her life. When she decided to
retire, why, she really enjoyed living. She'd worked hard all
of her life, so she spent about five or six months a year in St.
Petersburg, Florida, and we looked after that, rented a place for her
So you were brought up as a Baptist.
Yes, sir.
Would you all go to church and Sunday school every week?
Every single Sunday. That's one thing that was a must around me as far as I can remember. Everyone had to go to church on Sunday. No question about it.
Did your mother read the Bible at home or have prayers every day?
Yes, every day she'd read the Bible. In fact, she made a statement not long before she passed away that she didn't really know how many times she'd read the Bible. Many, many times.
And she believed in hard work so much so that she just kept on working.
That's right. She said that hard work'll never hurt anyone, and it was really difficult for us to get her to quit working.
What about your own thoughts as you were going to grade school and high school? Did you have anything in mind that you would like to be later on?
Not exactly. I made up my mind at a very young age that I was going to
make money easier than my parents did somewhere along the line.
Actually, when I took this business course is when I made up my mind
that. . . . I really worked hard at that. That was my entire education.
But I got a
What was the name of that company?
That was Palmetto Brick Sales Corporation.
What kind of a vehicle did you have then?
Had old-model; I bought used trucks, solid-tired flat bottom trucks. We loaded it. They'd ship it in here by rail, and we took it out of the cars and delivered it to the jobs, wherever they were. So we stayed in that for a couple of years and did exceptionally well. They were selling a lot of big jobs here, and we thought we were going to be real wealthy people right quick. A little before '33 we actually got into the freight business locally, and in 1933 we decided to go into New York City, for we had looked into it and found out some good accounts that we could get up there. So actually we opened a little office in New York in 1933.
What was your organization called then?
Then it was Harris Motor Lines.
There are several questions here I'd like to ask about all this. You left the brick company to start your own company in 1929?
I started in '29. It must have been '31 that I left the brick company and got into the other completely.
But you were doing some of both, then, for a while.
Doing some of both for quite a . . .
Until you had built up . . .
Till I had built up. I held onto that until I had built up this over-the-road setup.
How did you make that leap into hauling other kind of freight? What were
some of the first other things you
We contacted a few local people here that had to have a local carrier to pick up their freight at the railroad and deliver it here and there and at their warehouses. So we just got into it, and that started growing until we decided then to go over the road.
Who would some of those people have been?
One of our pretty good-sized accounts was the A & P Tea Company at that time. They had a lot of local deliveries around town that we got into. In fact, later on, even when I sold my company, we were doing 100 percent of their hauling from New York, New Jersey into the two Carolinas.
But at this time you would be taking things from the railroad around.
Just local.
So you had managed to buy your own truck, or two or three trucks?
We had managed to buy some small local trucks. Then, of course, when we started into New York, we bought three tractors and three trailers.
Where did you get those from?
We bought those here in town. We had accumulated a little money then, so we financed them and bought our first brand-new trucks.
What were they?
It was a straight-cab tractor at that time. They didn't have
any sleeper cabs. We started out with a straight-cab Chevrolet and
Fruehof trailers, and we later got into Internationals and so on. But
the very
Were there other people in this area about that same time that started along with you in the business?
Yes, in 1933, in fact, half a dozen of my close friends. Akers Motor Lines started about that time; McLean Trucking Company started about that time. In fact, he started into New York exactly when we did, 1933.
Was your brother involved in this business?
He wasn't for a while, but when we got going early—I don't remember the exact year—he started in with us then and was with us all the way through till we sold out.
Did you start to work for the brick company while you were still going to business college, or that was after you finished?
That's after I graduated. I did not work any during that time.
And you studied accounting.
Accounting. Right.
Your brother, what . . .
Business administration. And my brother had the same course that I had.
That was early in the Depression, which was a pretty hard time to start things, wasn't it?
Yes, sir, there wasn't but one way to go at that time, and
that was go up. It was just about as bad as it could get, I guess. In
fact, when the banks closed, I called our people together, the employees
we had, and told them the situation we were in. We didn't
have much money up there, but what little bit we had was tied up, and
that we had two alternatives: either to quit, or they was going to have
to work a while till we could get it straightened out. And each one of
them—we didn't have that many—said
How did the idea occur to make this New York connection?
We just decided that we could have a better future if we started hauling long-haul freight. Along with that, we kept up our local work here until we really got into the long haul heavier.
Did you know other people at that time here who were doing long-haul freight runs?
Yes, several of us had talked about it with some of my competitors that were getting into it. Yes, the Fredrickson Motor Express is probably the oldest one in North Carolina, I guess. Charlie Fredrickson, the founder of that company, was a real personal friend of mine. He's probably responsible for me getting in the over-the-road. He started in it, Not into New York; they never did operate except in North Carolina, but he was hauling all over North Carolina.
Back then, I guess, it was considered long-haul if you were operating . . .
Just hauling from here to Asheville was a long haul. That's true. And Fredrickson started out pretty well covering North Carolina, and got bigger and bigger.
When you all came into New York, did you have to have union drivers to get into New York?
Yes, I went to New York and talked to a union man and worked out a deal with him. Then, of course, it wasn't nearly as strict as it is now. But he was union, and . . .
It was the Teamsters then?
It was the Teamsters. And I worked out an agreement with him. I told him
that he'd have to do everything there: unload the truck, load
the
And he was on your payroll.
He was on our payroll on a straight salary.
But if you hadn't done that, then you wouldn't have been allowed in.
We definitely would not. We couldn't let our drivers go in and out of New York; it's just be nothing but trouble, because a lot of the customers we had wanted to see if the boys had union cards. New our over-the-road boys were definitely non-union and were not for many, many years. But this man up there let them come on in and deliver and pick up, but he went with them. They could go out and help him, but we did not try to do anything without letting him know it, letting him in on it. But later on he saw we was treating him all right, and he was treating us well, so he let them on the way back go pick up whatever they wanted to without him going, but he was the boss.
What was his name?
Leonard Lemarn. Leonard was the first man I hired, and he was the whole chief at that time. He was still with my company and retired just a short while before I sold it, and as good a friend as I ever had as well as a loyal employee.
Were you the only company then running from Charlotte to New York?
No, there was lots of them did. The companies that were running to New
York and doing a great job also were two of the biggest companies in the
South. There was Horton Motor Lines; Buddy Horton was a very personal
friend of mine, and he gave me a lot of information and talked to me a
lot about opening up New York before I opened up. Bob Barnwell was
president of Barnwell Brothers Trucking Company, and they were operating
into New York.
Were you doing any of the driving or travelling on these trips yourself?
Yes, I used to back when I got into the local freight business. I drove a truck in the morning and then went home and took a shower and then solicited freight in the afternoons. And the only over-the-road driving I did, for a few years I'd take weekend trips from here to Norfolk or from here to Baltimore or Washington, pull a tractor and trailer up there where I could go in and unload it on Sunday and come back. I'd take those weekend trips a lot, but never regular over-the-road. Now my brother was an over-the-road driver for quite a few years, along with the other drivers.
Before we get back to some of this other material, let me ask you a little bit about how you met your wife and when you all were married and a little bit about her family background.
She lived in Forest City all of her life.
What's her name?
Ruth Doggett Harris. She went through the grammar grades and high school in Forest City.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
In fact, we are going to her 1927 class reunion this weekend in
Did you know her in high school?
I started dating her barefooted, riding a bicycle, when I was just a young boy, and we dated off and on all that time. She had other boyfriends and I had other girlfriends, but we kept seeing each other constantly until we were married in 1933.
What did her parents do?
Her parents were also in the lumber business. He was in the lumber business in Forest City, had a lumber plant all of his life. He retired not too long before he passed away. He was in it just about all his life.
And you all have three children?
We have three children. I have two sons and one daughter.
Do you still go to the Baptist church?
Yes, sir, go to the Myers Park Baptist Church and have since that church was organized. We used to go to the First Baptist Church here in Charlotte, and then they opened up the Myers Park Baptist, so I've been out there ever since.
That's a well known church.
A well known church. Yes, we've had three fine ministers since I've been there.
I was reading about one of them the other night, the Rev. . . .
Carlyle Marney. Yes, he was the greatest. Dr. Heaton's great, and then Gene Owens was just as great. We've been very fortunate.
Let me get you back on the trucking a minute, and you have to talk as if
you're talking to me, who doesn't know anything
much about all this, and some of the questions I ask may not make much
sense to you, but they're going to help me understand some
things.
First place, the railroads just could not give the service that we would give. For instance, we could pick up a freight here on a Wednesday morning, we'll say, and Friday morning we would assure the people that it would be delivered to their door in New York City or anywhere up in that territory. And the railroads just could not give that kind of service, so we started getting railroad freight. There's no question about it. Service is what made the trucking industry for long-haul freight.
What were you all hauling to New York then?
North-bound, the biggest thing we'd haul was textiles from North and South Carolina. In fact, my company didn't go any further south than South Carolina. But mostly textiles, some tires. McLean Rubber Company was a real good customer of ours, and they shipped everywhere. But textiles, mainly, going north, and coming south we kept a real good—had to—balanced operation. But just about everything come south; we hauled just about everything you can think of, south-bound.
There would be a lot of finished goods, more than unprocessed things?
Coming south, the biggest things that we hauled was, oh, just say almost anything you think of: batteries and canned goods. We hauled everything A & P shipped from the New York-New Jersey area to the South Carolina places. Proctor and Gamble was a big customer of ours.
What were the textile companies that you hauled for back then?
We hauled for just about all of them. Our biggest customer was Celanese Corporation. We handled an awful lot of freight from Celanese from all of their plants in South Carolina and North Carolina going east. Burlington Mills was a good customer of ours.
Did you meet any of the people who were in charge of the southern operations of Celanese and Burlington?
Yes, sir. The general traffic manager of Celanese Corporation was a real good friend of mine.
What's his name?
Bill Summerville. And he was in charge of traffic for the whole company. Now they also operated some trucks of their own, but that was a small percentage of what they gave to other people. I didn't haul, couldn't have hauled, all of their freight, really, but that was our number one account.
What about at Burlington? Did you meet . . .
Yes, sir, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Spencer Love, their top man, one of the smartest men I think I've ever known. Played a little golf with him later on in Florida when he had a home in Florida that he spent a little time. But that's the hardest working man I've ever seen.
Could you talk a little bit about meeting him and what you remember about that?
Yes, sir, I sure can. The first time I met him, actually, was in Florida.
A real good friend of mine was a friend of his and asked me to play golf
with him one day, and I said I'd love to. I'd been
wanting to meet him, I'd heard so much about him. So he said,
"Well, I'll let you
We've collected a number of stories about Spencer Love in the last couple of years.
Yes, he was one of the greatest, no question about it.
But it does seem like he couldn't really ever enjoy himself or relax.
Just couldn't. He couldn't. He was still playing tennis, though. Kept himself in good shape. Quite a guy.
Tell me a little bit about the growth of the company in the 1930's, in terms of the number of trucks or however you all measured that.
Later on we kept adding trucks as we could. We went through the War; we were still a small company, but at that time I guess we had. . . . You define a tractor and trailer as two pieces of equipment. Our tractors, trailers, pickups, and trucks, I guess we got up to 300 and some pieces.
That was by about the time of World War II?
That was just before the end of World War II. We were real busy all
during the War and worked awfully hard. The first nice vacation
What were the conditions in the industry that brought that about?
We just found out that we couldn't compete with these great big carriers. I just was convinced in the early stages that these big carriers. . . . For instance, carriers like Associated Transport at that time, merged from Horton Motor Lines, could pick up freight in New York going just everywhere, Chicago, anywhere else. And ours was limited to North and South Carolina and New York. So we just decided we couldn't compete with them unless we got an awful lot bigger, and we'd have to open up also in the Chicago territory to take care of a lot of big customers. So we decided then at that time, in place of merging. . . . Of course, our family owned all the stock, and my company never was any outstanding stock, so we decided we'd rather sell as to get tangled up with some other company.
When was that?
That was '65 when I sold out.
It could have been '64; '64 or '65.
Let me go back, since we're really primarily interested in
this period before World War II, and see if I can ask the right sort of
questions that might cause you to remember some other things.
Yes, sir. It was hard for people to believe all over the country, but
Charlotte was the spot for the trucking industry, and even, I think, the
largest, really, at one time. There was just everything in the world
hauled north- and south-bound, and, of course, as I said before, this
has to be a balanced operation. So I made up my mind to begin with, when
I started that little local business, that Charlotte was the place for
the
Why was that?
I guess the textile industry here had an awful lot to do with it, but just because there's so much industry in this area.
It would look like some people would have moved, say, down to Greenville, South Carolina. What kept things from developing there?
It was just not as good, but real good there. I'm talking about this area. Of course, we had a terminal in Greenville, South Carolina, just the same as we had here in Charlotte. And the Greenville area was a great area for us, because I guess we pulled more freight north-bound out of that area than we did out of the Charlotte area, really. Textiles, I'm sure that's right.
How early was it that you had a terminal in Greenville?
We opened up a terminal in Greenville just a very short while after we started. The first terminal was in New York. The second terminal was in Greenville; I'm sure it was. And then we opened a terminal in Baltimore, because we were getting right much freight there; one in Philadelphia; one over in New Jersey. Greenville, though, was one of the first ones. Then we finally opened a terminal in Burlington. So our traffic was mostly between Greenville and Boston. Now we did not operate into Boston, no further than New York, but we had connections in New York that picked up our trailers and took them right on in to Interline.
Were there any sort of state laws or advantages in being in North Carolina as opposed to South Carolina, to have your headquarters operation? Would that have entered into it at all to make people come to Charlotte?
I don't think so. We could have had our headquarters in
Greenville, I guess, as well as Charlotte. We really wouldn't
have thought
Yes, Mr. Outlaw had that same feeling about it all. In the late twenties there was a governor here from Charlotte, Cameron Morrison, who was known for building lots of roads, among other things. Would that have had any effect upon the emergence soon after that of the trucking industry, the fact that there had been this good roads movement here, and there wasn't one yet in, say, South Carolina or other states?
Good roads certainly had a lot to do with it; there's no question about that. The governor was a mighty fine man; I knew him, of course.
Do you know enough about him at that time to know why he got interested in that particular sort of a project?
I didn't really know him real well. When he was campaigning, he was running against a very personal friend of mine, Bob Reynolds. Bob Reynolds was my real good friend, so we were on opposite sides of the fence, but I got along swell with him. Bob was elected and was a personal friend of mine as long as he lived.
Maybe you could say a little bit about the [North Carolina] Motor
Yes, we did from the very beginning. We were irregular common carriers at that time, and I was very active in the Irregular Common Carriers, in fact spent a lot of time in Washington at meetings various places during the War and so forth. Then we got in the North Carolina Motor Carriers at a very early date. I don't remember the exact date, but we hadn't been in business long until we joined the North Carolina Motor Carriers. And that has been one of the most active clubs in the country anywhere. The best managed, too, I'll guarantee. I can't say enough about Tom Outlaw.
That's another term you'll have to explain, "irregular carrier", just what that means.
Irregular carriers supposedly didn't have to run on a daily schedule. In other words, we could pick up a load of freight here and carry it into Pittsburgh or wherever we wanted to, and it might be a month or six months, maybe, before we'd go back to that territory. But a regular route carrier had to operate regular, just to hold out for service any day they wanted it(?).
Can you think of the Motor Carriers in any way as a kind of lobbying group in terms of trying to effect legislative changes? Is that how it's defined in North Carolina, or what?
Yes, sirree. They work together better than any industry I have ever heard of. We would go out in the daytime and fight each other for traffic, but I'll tell you, when we got together at a meeting, we worked together. And the ATA, of course, is very powerful, and we all then belonged to the ATA as well as the North Carolina Motor Carriers' Association. And I've just never heard of a group that stuck together any better.
What were the purposes of the Motor Carriers in terms of dealing with the legislature in North Carolina back in the thirties? What kind of things would you be wanting to get changed or wanting to get done?
Back in the thirties we realized that we had to have heavier weights as the trucks were beginning to get longer and longer and we could pull more. So it wasn't an individual trying to get this; we had to as a group stay together, and did. And that's very important. And any laws that come up, which is something all the time, it looks like, affecting the trucking industry, why, every one of them was in it together, and they really stuck together and still do, a hundred percent.
Let me ask you one further question. You mentioned early the involvement with the union when you were going into New York. Were there any North and South Carolina members of, say, the Teamsters before World War II that you know of?
Oh, yes. We were one of the very last companies joining the union over-the-road. I don't remember the exact year. It finally got so rough—they were abusing our drivers up and down the road—we actually asked them to join the union, because it was getting dangerous and the union was awful powerful in the North at that time. But we operated non-union except in New York City, as I said; we hired. . . . And later in Baltimore, Philadelphia, we worked out agreements the same way. But our over-the-road people stayed out of the union till the very latest. But some of the carriers that were bigger, of course, got in the union right away. They were big enough, like Associated (at that time, Horton) and Barnwell; and, of course, they were in it because they were too big to stay out of it.
And that would have applied to all of their drivers?
Yes, sirree. They were one hundred percent union.
That would have been in the 1930's?
Yes, I'd say they were positively a hundred percent in the union in the very early thirties. I don't know the exact time, but they were in years and years and years before we did, because we just simply weren't big enough to attract a lot of people, I guess.
So they would have had locals in North Carolina with presidents and elected officers?
Yes, sirree. They were in half a dozen or more locals everywhere.
Were there any particular spokesmen for the Teamsters in North and South Carolina in that time period that you remember as being well known?
After I got in the union, sure, we got together with
Of which group?
For all the truckers. We elected him chairman, so
He represented you all.
Right. Along with Mr. Outlaw, of course, who was in on all of them also. North Carolina Motor Carriers.
END OF INTERVIEW