THE GRANDRULE Tom Pirnie, president of Grand Island Express continues to adapt and stay involved in Nebraska trucking.


By eRic FRaNcis Contributing Writer


photogRaphy By RaNdy haMptoN Change, the old saying goes, is the only


constant. And when you run a family-owned business like a trucking company, you’ve got to be ready for that change. Take a pair of sibling carriers founded by James


D. Pirnie of Grand Island, Neb., in 1967. Grand Island Express was a moving and storage company, not a cross-country truckload carrier. Arrow Freight Lines, which ran reefers, had as one of its main customers Swift Meat Packing and the main


cargo it carried was swinging meat, a term of art not often heard in either the meatpacking or hauling industries these days. “Early on – in the late Sixties, Seventies,


Eighties – that was pretty common,” said Tom Pirnie, the current president of Grand Island Express. “A meat plant would cut up the cattle into just quarters. You hung the quarters from the ceiling of the refrigerated trailer. Haul it close to the destination, like Chicago, and meat cutters there would cut it into appropriate portions. “You’re hauling 40,000 pounds of meat, and a quarter is probably 250, 300 pounds,” he said.


“Around 160 pieces of meat hanging, that’s like 40 head of cattle. Almost nobody hauls it that way anymore.” Yes, things change. Arrow Freight was sold in


the 1970s, its new owner went bankrupt a couple of years later, and the state Public Service Commission cancelled its authority. Grand Island Express still hauls meat, but it’s no longer swinging from chains. Most modern processing plants have their own boxing operation, reducing the cow into the cuts familiar from the grocery store’s meat counter, and packing them into 50-pound boxes that now fill the Continues


NEBRASKA TRUCKER — ISSUE 4, 2013 — www.nebtrucking.com


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