Tim's interview with the Five Star fleets

A

t 50-year-old Sammons Trucking,

an open-deck/truckload carrier, “

what

you see is what you get

,” says company

President Tim Burke.

“We don’t put on a fancy front, we

don’t have a big glass house,” Burke

said. “We’re down-to-earth people.

When you get a

handshake and somebody

tells you what’s going to happen,

damn it, it better happen.”

The benefits to owner-operators

of an established company like Sammons

include proven stability — a

sign of management’s ability to

plan

successfully

for the long

term

, Burke

explained.

And he rapidly

called

the roll of

the Sammons

support team,

along with

their years

at the company:

CFO, 35

years; settlements,

35

years; accounting 37 years; IT, 35 years;

billing, 32 years.

“They know the business, and the

business does change,” Burke said.

“These folks have been so good when it

comes to modeling contractor success,

it’s amazing.

We’re all in this together

and we all communicate to make sure

we’re in tune with what the contractor

needs.”

More significantly, those office

doors are open at Sammons.

“A lot of people say that have an

open-door policy. Well, our open-door

policy is just what it states,” Burke

said. “If you’ve got an issue,

let’s get

it resolved

. We’ve got shipper clients

and we’ve got independent contractor

clients. At Sammons, we do our best in

the background to make sure that both

are successful.”

For an independent contractor, that

means “

picking what he wants to do,

when he wants to do it and how he wants

to do it,” Burke added.

“We’re here, basically, to try to

make sure contractors are profitable

under the rates and make sure that we’re

abiding by a set of rules and laws where

we’re safe,” he said. “And at the end of

the day we can wring out a little bit of

profit.”