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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-0277, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
When trucking companies in North Carolina came under pressure from state legislators to comply with new regulations, they decided to establish a rate bureau and looked to John Thomas Outlaw to head the operation. Outlaw left his home state, South Carolina, to do so. In this interview, however, rather than describing his personal experiences, he outlines the growth of the trucking industry in the South during the twentieth century and some of the issues trucking companies faced, such as an increasingly complex set of regulations and the growing need for technical expertise. He connects trucking to the spread of railroads and paved roads, and offers his thoughts on the mildly successful incursion of unions into the industry. This interview, though brief, will be a rich resource for researchers interested in the trucking industry in North Carolina and the South as a whole.
John Thomas Outlaw, who headed the rate bureau of the North Carolina Motor Carriers Association, discusses the history of the trucking industry in North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
… about some of the early memories you have about where you grew up or about your family background and circumstances, occupations that your parents or grandparents might have had, things like that. What comes to mind when you look way back?
My family was a very close family, a large family. My daddy had two sets
of children. She died at childbirth, and they had had three children. My
mother was the second wife, and he had three children, and I was the
youngest of the three children. He was a man that really loved the
family and knew how to provide well for them. I can recall so well the
family picnics we had as a child, going out at ponds—we had, back in
those days, public ponds—to swim. And I recall that he so often would
not only carry us out there, but he'd invite friends to go with us as a
group. Another thing that's outstanding in my mind is when I was a very
young child, our families used to have a reunion at my mother's old
homeplace, and it was on a very beautiful river bank called South
Edgetow(
How long would that last usually?
That would last two or three weeks or more. The menfolks would come and
go to work as they had to—there was always men there—and the wives and
children would stay there as their husbands would come and go. I
remember one time during that period of time they would have a big
barbecue, and they always had black servants that were there to cook.
And they would prepare a pig and dig a ditch to barbecue him. Then the
next day the distant cousins would come and have an all-day celebration.
It was a lot of fun. My daddy had any number of businesses. He was a
person that had many, many abilities, and he did well in his lifetime.
Unfortunately, he died when I was nine. But
About when was this?
This was about 1936 or '37, and then about 1939 or '38 I went to work
with the South Carolina Highway Department in the Traffic Division. And
there I learned something about traffic, that is, freight rates, and I
worked under Mr. W. L. Glazer, who was one of the top traffic men in
South Carolina, and learned a lot there. By that time we were getting
ready for war, and so he taught me enough information about traffic that
I was able to organize
How would you have approached him? What would you have said?
The Association was right dormant. It hadn't really done anything
outstanding. And my whole projection was what we were going to do. And
till this very day I've found out that it's not what you have done, it's
what you're planning to do that will either sell or not sell. It's not
your accomplishments. So I began to talk about setting up a rate bureau
Let me go back and ask you a little bit about this first group you mentioned. I think you called them Associated Transport?
Yes.
Was that in some way trying to do what you as a state organization later did? Was that an early effort at this, or was that just a haulers' business?
No, the reason why I mentioned them was that Mr. Horton was the first president of the North Carolina Motor Carriers' Association. I think he had the vision of taking seven or eight of the largest carriers and forming a truck line, and that way he felt confident that sooner or later the truck lines would all be large and there'd be practically no small ones, and he even made that statement at one of the meetings that I recall so well, that the day for the small carrier was over. And he was entirely wrong in that, but I think that was the main purpose, to organize and to become like a railroad, for instance, of enormous size and handle all the business.
So that's what Associated Transport was. It was a combination of several …
Truck lines.
Did they try to carry out any of these functions that your organization would?
No, they were operated just like a truck line. There was no competition between us and them; they were members just like any other group was.
What about other parts of the country, comparing the developments in South Carolina and North Carolina to how the same phenomena took place in other parts of the country?
South Carolina when I left there was considered a much stronger association than North Carolina. They had done well; they had a good association manager. His name was Bill Love. He thought that I would be a good association manager, and he told me when I was head of the Motor Rate Bureau that "You ought to head up one of the state associations." And he made several feelers around, but nothing came of that other than he'd put the thought in my mind that maybe I ought to try to get a job as an association manager. When some of these carriers in North Carolina operating through South Carolina learned that North Carolina had in mind passing a truck act up here, they then approached me about coming up here to set up a rate bureau. Within six months I was also made head of the state association, and then they combined the two together and made it into one organization.
Was the Rate Bureau a function of the official state government?
No. A truck rate bureau is for the purpose of getting together the
carriers to publish rates, charges as to what they will haul a commodity
or commodities for. And to comply legally with it, the state has
regulations as to how a tariff should be put together, and it's very
well drawn out as to
How early was it that the state decided that there should be regulation of trucking?
In 1947. 1935 was when the Interstate Commerce Commission Act was put
into effect, on a federal basis. And then it was not until 1947 that the
legislature in North Carolina passed it. One thing of interest would be
that the railroads, of course, were the cause of the Interstate Commerce
Commission being formed, and that was done about 1887. The railroads had
A lot of the truck lines actually got their start with particular single individuals having one truck?
Yes. During the Depression, so many of the men graduating from
universities and all could not find anything to do. Persons like Grier
Beam, who now is the owner of Carolina Freight Carriers. He bought a
pickup truck, and he would go to Florida and buy produce and fruit and
bring it back to Cherryville and sell it. He had finished the State
University here in Raleigh, and that's the way he got up(
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
By that time, I believe [Governor] Aycock had gotten a bond issue through for the highway system for $100 million. And then shortly after that is when they paved a road to each of the county seats. I think that's the reason why you see that jump from 1920 to 1925.
And the real significant one, too—I guess this was when trucks were just beginning to get started—between 1915 and 1920.
That's right. A person was more or less buying a truck just to haul freight around town, just purely within the city itself, or town.
They'd take something from a warehouse to a railroad line or to a store?
Correct. Then from 1940, from 87,000 up to 100,000, that's quite evident the War was responsible for that.
There was that big leap between '45 and '50, kind of post-War, where the number of trucks again doubled.
That's right. By that time industry began to use the truck, as
When do you think it was that the textile companies themselves began to buy their own trucks? Some of them have their own truck lines.
That has been so gradual that I don't think you could even stipulate a time. Each company had its own way of just gradually getting into it, but I would say from about 1945 the textile companies began to use their own trucks. But they have always used for-hire trucks, too, to supplement their fleets. The reason is that the textile people would naturally move freight where it was most beneficial to them, and a lot of times it was from warehouse to warehouse. And they could get a two-way haul out of it back and forth. But then when you began to cover like the state of North Carolina, they couldn't have very well afforded to have a truck to just run making a distribution from one point to the other. And the for-hire industry would take the freight and does today and make distribution of it to all parts of the state.
Let me ask a question that shows more my lack of knowledge about the
industry than anything else. In the railroad industry, there are these
old issues about freight rates and basing points and advantages which
certain cities … Say, even within the South, Atlanta got a certain sort
of an advantage, and then Charlotte got some basing point kind of
advantage. Is there a similar thing in the trucking, where a particular
city might be given a little special favor or, because of the way that
the rate structure developed, certain cities became the centers for the
trucking industry more than others
Now you cannot discriminate. Back in the early days when the railroads were in their heyday, so to speak, and to protect the large movements of freight up in the New England areas, they had preferential rates for that part of the country. And they were higher down this way, as I mentioned earlier, but not quite in this manner. It was 1947, I believe, it was, or in that vicinity, that the southern governors got together and sued the railroads, and the courts ruled that they could not discriminate, therefore, in the future. Rates would be the same in both areas. But for a long time they had had these differential rates that were very preferable [preferential] to the Northeast. After that was done, that's when the textile industry moved south and began to grow and to flourish as we have it today.
Would there have been anything like that at all in the trucking industry
earlier(
No, because after the Truck Act of 1935, whatever the carriers' rate was on different brackets, like from ten-mile brackets on up to 500 miles or 1,000 miles, any shipper that was moving anything in any of those brackets would have the same rate. Now the carriers can have a different rate in there, but that carrier cannot show any preferential treatment or give anything to one shipper that they would not give to the other, any preference of any kind.
Again, because I don't know very much about all this, would there be rate differentials depending on what was being hauled in the truck, the difference between hauling, say, yarn and hauling finished apparel?
Yes, surely. The basis for a rate is determined by any number of things,
but just two or three of them: one would be the value of the product;
and then the density of the product; and then the distance involved. So
these
Did that happen very early, these combinations of factors?
Yes, it did, because otherwise it would have been impossible to keep track of all the thousands of items that move.
In the 1930's or as far back as you have ever heard about, could you talk about contoversies or political arguments or advocacies within the trucking industry? Would there be traditional kind of issues that would be coming up, either that you would have to deal with the legislature about or with other groups about?
Yes. Getting into another field, just to broaden out the subject a little
bit, when you get in your car and you go from one state to the other,
when you pass over the imaginary line from South Carolina to North
Carolina, you are not aware of it at all. But when a truck goes from one
state to the other, the state must know that that truck is coming
through. Before that truck goes, the individual carrier has to provide
information that this truck is going to buy so many gallons to get it
through the state. And they do that by a method of requiring a report
from each carrier as to the vehicle
How early did these kind of issues appear in the industry?
From the very beginning. I recall so well that back right after World War II, the federal government and the President of the United States had asked all states to eliminate all restrictions on trucks as to requiring licenses and that type of thing to go through, make it as easy as possible because they had to get the freight moved. So as soon as the War was over, these states quickly realized that here's a source of revenue that we're not even touching, and so they began to apply license fees against these trucks.
And those had been there before the War.
Yes, they had been there before, but it wasn't enough movement then to be
of any real consequence. The great distances of a truck moving was not
too much involved. Tennessee was one of the first states to start
requiring a license. Then some of the other states would say, "Well, you
have so many trucks going through here, and we want you to buy a full
license." It was just a hodge-podge of different things. North Carolina
was a trucking state, because, for some reason or other, we did get
ahead as far as the motor carriers were concerned, and we had more
carriers really operating long distances domiciled in our state than any
state in the nation. So we were more than just interested; we had to do
something about it. I was on a committee that met in Atlanta, Georgia,
with the other southern managers' association, and we decided that we
just had to get the governors to intercede for the fact that each of the
highway commissioners or the motor vehicle commissioners had complete
authority to charge anything they wanted to. There was no way to break
around that; if you want to operate through there, you just have to pay
the full bill, more or less. So we
About when was that?
That was in the late forties and early fifties.
This early advantage that you're talking about that North Carolina had, when would that have actually been visible, in the thirties? Already by that time you could see the fact that there were more trucks here and more trucking …
No, I don't think it was until after World War II that North Carolina was recognized as a trucking state. I think up to then no one would have even paid much attention to how many trucks were in the state. They just were not important up to that time.
Charlotte has emerged somehow to be a kind of trucking center. Why has that been?
I don't think anybody really knows why Charlotte became a trucking area
except the advantage in the early stages of the paved highways, because
Charlotte was a big city, and of course there was a lot of commerce in
and out of there, and therefore the carriers in that area. There was a
lot of individuals that bought trucks and started operating. And
Charlotte is right in line with Atlanta, Georgia. In your mind's eye,
probably you think
Real interstate traffic, like you say, didn't start to develop until after the War, at least heavily.
Not to the point you would recognize it as an outstanding industry. It just grew without hardly being noticed. In fact, it was so slow that the railroads paid no attention to the competition. They wouldn't even admit there was a trucking industry. They could have easily gotten into the trucking business if they'd wanted to, but they just didn't consider it worthwhile.
Were there some early pioneering figures that are worthy of special mention or attention in North and South Carolina?
You mean individual persons?
Yes.
It depends on how you think of it. I would think every president of this association would have been considered a pioneer, thinking in terms of the industry. By the way, we do have all the pictures and the past presidents out here on the wall. Uncle Johnny Wilkinson was another pioneer of the trucking industry. He was a household mover, and that company has the number one Interstate Commerce authority as far as household movers are concerned. Mr. Charlie Fredrickson's company was the first freight line that was recorded to move freight from Charlotte to Hickory, and I believe they have the number one certificate for the State of North Carolina, intrastate. Certainly Mr. Malcolm McLean would be considered a pioneer. All of these gentlemen that I mentioned started before the thirties or in the thirties. He built a very strong organization. The story is told on him that I had friends tell me about that it was his brother-in-law; Malcolm, when he first started operating, he was operating on such a close margin that he would borrow his credit card to buy fuel from here to New York. I think his had expired for the lack of payment of fuel or something.
And as you say, there must have been a number of people who did try that and had a bad break and just failed.
Yes. And finally North Carolina grew to the point that they had enough substantial carriers that it was considered the trucking state as far as the East Coast was concerned, and probably the United States. And I have heard two different Interstate Commerce Commissioners say that North Carolina had more long-line carriers domiciled within this state than any other state in the nation. That is not true today.
We haven't talked about any South Carolina pioneers in the same way. Can you think of any?
I remember M. D. Hicklin there.
Where was he from?
He was from Columbia, South Carolina. His brother now is Mr. Alec Hicklin, and he's from St. Matthew's. I think they both started in business about the same time, but Columbia did much better, grew much faster in the common carrier field than the other brother.
And it's called Hicklin?
It was M. D. Hicklin in Columbia. It's now grown to be the Southeastern Freight Lines. And the Southeastern Freight Lines, there were two men working for M. D. Hicklin. Most of his business was in the oil business, but he then had the common carrier authority, too. He decided to retire, and so he sold the business to C. L. Fuller and W. T. Cassels. W. T. Cassels took the dry freight, and the other one, I think, took the oil company. W. T. Cassels now operates the Southeastern, which is the largest domiciled truck line in South Carolina. And C. L. Fuller, I don't know exactly the size of his operation.
What about in the Greenville-Spartanburg area? Are there any in that?
There are now, and it would be best for me not to try to get into that, for the fact that I really don't know names like I should because I've been away from there so long. But there is at least one ig there.
You say "there are now," as if that hasn't happened but recently.
It's happened since I've been here in North Carolina. At Greenville there are not a lot of big truck lines at all. Just one.
Let me ask another question that reflects more my lack of information. In trying to understand something about the truck drivers a little bit, I can imagine a question that would have to do with the fact that most of the truck line owners seem to be in the category of small- to medium-size businesses.
Yes.
And I guess then they began to hire drivers pretty early, some of them, and others more recently. What about this whole question of unionization within the trucking industry and its relationship to the Motor Carriers' Association?
Since we do not deal with the unions at all in this association, I have
very little knowledge and operating interest in it. I'd like to just
talk about the driver himself. Starting back, of course the individual
drove, and then he would buy a truck and get someone else to drive it.
There were no regulations on safety or anything else at that time,
either pertaining to the truck or the driver. So when World War II came
on, there were literally thousands of drivers out there, and the Army
and the federal government didn't feel that this was a profession they
would give any exemptions to, so they just took all the drivers and put
them out on the battlefield and left nothing but 4-F's and people of the
kind that maybe you wouldn't want to work for you to drive. And they did
a pretty good job of it, because the freight did move. But after the War
the industry knew that it was absolutely essential that they get these
men off the highways and put qualified people on. So the industry
thought in terms of having a truck driver training school to help with
that, and by 1949 Ed Ruggles and I—Mr. Ruggles was head of the Extension
Division of the State University—decided that we'd try to get a truck
driver training school in connection with the University. So we were
able to, and it was the very first in the
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
… place, and the different carriers began to set up what they called
safety departments, which at that time was a very mediocre-type thing.
They would either get a driver or they'd get a highway patrolman or get
someone to head up the department. And they'd take that particular
person and try to give him as much safety training as they could. Then
they would depend on that particular individual in the company called
the safety supervisor to do the hiring and firing of drivers. And
working in with the school at the same time, working towards improving
the driving on the highway system brought about the name that later
became right famous, the Knights of the Highway. And people respected
the truck driver for his ability to drive and also the way that he drove
as a gentleman of the highway. Emily Post even wrote a little book about
the manners of a professional truck driver. So they did make a very fine
name for themselves. And these safety men in North Carolina got together
then and, with encouragement from the Association and me, organized the
Safety Council of North Carolina. It was one of the first in the United
States, and then other states began to do the same thing and improve
their driving. Our program was, of course, limited. We'd moved along far
enough that we decided we'd have a contest between the states to see who
was really doing the best job among the state associations. They set up
a trophy to be won by the most outstanding one, and so our men were
doing such a fine job that we won the first trophy. In fact, we run it
three or four times, and it looked like we were going to win it every
time, so they changed the system, and now
Talking a little more about the drivers of the trucks, can you go back again into the twenties and thirties and say anything more about them? Would it be more common for someone who was driving for a company then to have owned a tractor, or would it have been more common for them just to have hired on for a year or two or by the job? What were those early drivers like, who did not really own their companies, but who were just …
Driving for someone else?
Yes.
They were just right off the street. They'd go in and say that they
wanted to drive, and probably without any training or with any test of
any kind they would start driving. A lot of times they would just drive
within the city itself, and then later on would get outside of the city,
and then on outside of the state. But the chances are that these
individuals were persons that actually didn't know anything about
driving. Their knowledge was completely limited as to even how the
vehicle functioned. But, some way or another, they came through. And the
braking system at that time was extremely inadequate. They first had the
same types of brakes that the automobile had. But that wasn't strong
enough and efficient enough, so they started out with a vacuum brake.
And the vacuum brake worked real well when it worked, but it was never
always secure. It never was a thing
Can you date those changes at all?
I'm just not that close to it; I really am not. Now another thing that came along with safety was the maintenance. There was no such thing as preventive maintenance. Just greasing a truck, like you do an automobile, would be about… And no records kept at all. And now there's highly sophisticated information on each unit. A trucker that's really on the ball, they know the miles of the truck, and at intervals they will pull the truck in to give it an overhaul. At certain times they bring it in, of course, for greasing and so forth. But it's all done on a very systematic basis, and some of the companies even keep track of the tires. They know exactly how many miles are on each tire, so it's very complex.
Let me go back for information's sake and see if I can get you to tell me about this question of unions, just from the point of view of someone who doesn't know anything about it. Are there large union memberships of truck drivers in this state?
Yes, really …
When did that begin, and how large, and so on?
The Teamsters were actually team drivers of mules and horses in the
northern areas, not in the southern areas. And as the truck came in,
instead of a man driving mules or horses in New York City and that area,
in those big cities, he then got a job driving a truck. They replaced
the wagon with a truck. And that's how they got the name "Teamsters".
And this type of thing was more or less only in the very large northern
cities. Then as time went on and the industry grew, the truck companies
of North Carolina that went into the northern area, they would not let
them unload
How early are you talking about when the first North Carolina truck drivers would have been Teamsters? Was it after World War II?
I believe, frankly, that I don't remember a union driver before World War II. It could have been, but I don't think there were.
Have there been any organizing efforts within the state itself?
Oh, yes.
None that you can remember before World War II?
I don't think so. I imagine there were some drivers that were, that
operated into New York City. In fact, I know there had to be, pretty
well, so there were some, but it was very limited. And today, from the
overall(
One other kind of direction would be the other sorts of industries that came out of the trucking industry. I'm thinking of things like mechanics and machinery, repair people and equipment servicing and all of these kinds of industries. Could you talk any about the growth of those related… Or do companies make it traditionally a practice to conduct those things themselves within their own company, or are there specialized servicing mechanic companies?
Starting back with more or less the Model T Ford, naturally most any man
that had a little adaption to being a mechanic could almost fix a unit.
And when the operations began to expand into different areas, this light
equipment just couldn't stand great distances. So the trucking industry,
we'll say in North Carolina, a carrier would probably have three or four
places to repair his own equipment or at least have it maintained, say
from here to New England, New York. It was just understood that the
truck was going to break down in those days and have flat tires and so
forth, so the carriers began to think in terms of how to prevent that.
And then they began to make demands on the manufacturers for bigger and
better equipment, which the manufacturers did supply. And the equipment
then started off with the gas motors, and in as little as 50,000 miles
they'd have to have an overhaul. And there were always repairs to be
made, and that's the reason why a number of carriers would have any
number of different maintenance places up and down the highways. At
least they would make a contract with a garage or something to fix their
equipment. And then came the diesel, and the diesels, almost from the
very beginning, could operate 100,000 miles without any major repairs.
And now today they have diesels that operate way above 300,000 miles
without any major repairs. And usually then they bring
And that's one that works for the industry as a whole.
Yes. It's made up of individual companies with their salesmen, and they
come together for seminars and councils(
What about the existence of any manufacturers within North and South Carolina of trucks or trucking equipment? Would that come about?
Yes, the Corbett Company at Henderson started, I assume, in the late twenties or in that vicinity, and they built a very fine unit. The company was owned and operated by the Corbett family, and they manufactured hundreds of units. Then during the War they manufactured the Army trucks, and they manufactured ambulances and any number of different specialized… And busses, by the way. And then I've never found why, but for some reason or another, as the family got older the company began to subside, and so they went out of business right after the War, I believe it was. I think in one or two places the equipment is still being operated. A fellow by the name of Johnson over at Charlotte started with the company as a boy, and he has some beautiful pictures in …
What is his …
… relationship with Allen.
Yes.
Are there other companies besides Corbett that you can think of in the Carolinas?
There was one trailer company that did a pretty good job of building trailers in Charlotte. I can't think of their names. They went out of business just a couple of years after I came up here, and they sold out to Trailmobile, a trailer company. I'm sure that in talking to Thurston or some of those other men, they would remember him.
The only other thing I can think of would be to get you to say just a little bit about something you have touched on a time or two, the fact that this industry did not become on where there were just a handful of large companies, but it has apparently a pretty diverse and large-numbered group.
Yes. Actually, in North Carolina we have now over 500 carriers that operate within the state and are domiciled within the state and are regulated by the Utilities Commission. Then, in addition to that, there are something like 3,000 independent operators that drive their own trucks. We have a large number of private carriers in North Carolina, and in North Carolina we have better than a million trucks, but that does include the lightweight trucks.
Is it probably because you can start up, compared to other industries, with less of an initial investment that would keep this from being an industry that just had a few companies in it?
I'd say anyone that has a company and has to move freight, if he has
enough to warrant buying a truck that he can buy it and move his own
merchandise. However, if you were going in the business and you were
going to serve other people, you would have to have authority. But the
Commission has always been very generous about granting authority, and
therefore the
I know that story, though.
Well, that's the way it will be. Unfortunately, it's going to happen. There will be some deregulations, and there's going to be some great adjustments, and it's going to be very costly to the shipping public.
Can you think of any other reasons that we haven't touched on why there would be such a large number of carriers and it hasn't become monopolized?
I think it's due to the fact that right now, if you wanted to go in the
trucking business, you could go down to the Commission and get an exempt
commodity authority—that is, if you want to haul for somebody else—and
then you could take that statement from the Utilities Commission that
you're going
One final thing has occurred, thinking back over some of the interviews that we have done with people in the textile industry. There weren't very many blacks involved in the textile industry, but the ones that were involved oftentimes did things like driving trucks; they were haulers of goods from one point to another. I was just curious about whether or not blacks then got involved in the trucking industry and if there are any significant black-owned carriers.
There are several in this state, but I don't know why they didn't choose
to get into it. Apparently it didn't cross their mind about organizing a
truck line. There was a family named named Bell over at Jackson who
operated a number of trucks. The father then died, and he had a sawmill
and
There wouldn't be any among the top ten or twenty or thirty or forty carriers.
No. They apparently just were not interested.
Would there have been any kind of effects of discrimination as there were, say, in the textile industry that kept the blacks on the outside of the mill instead of allowing them to go in?
I don't think so. I never knew of that, because none of the truck lines do have almost all blacks. It would vary, but generally speaking the truckload flatbed carriers that haul cotton and fertilizer and tobacco, a lot of those drivers are black. And I think the reason is that most of that is a rural type of commodity, and there's just more blacks over there in the farm area, and that's the reason why they have them.
As a last question, do you have any sort of speculations about where the trucking industry is going now, with the price of fuel and things like that?
Well, it's one thing for sure: there will never be any less trucks than
what there are unless there's a new type or new form of transportation
that comes along. The future is beautiful and brilliant for the trucking
industry. The method of operations can change and will change—I'm sure
of that—but trucks are here to stay, and they will continue to operate
on the highways, and they will continue to move the freight. And as
industries grow, the trucking industry will grow likewise. Now in what
shape or form a company will be in the future just remains to be seen,
but I feel like without regulation,
END OF INTERVIEW