Because a major carrier protested, the ICC held up the purchase for a year but granted temporary authority for Crete to manage it without having to pay for it. During that year, Acklie changed Shaffer’s business model, never running a route where it didn’t have a backhaul available, making it more profitable. By the time the process was completed, the company was worth far more than the original asking price, which Crete still paid. Crete bought Tempco Transportation out of Indiana in 1976. In 1979, it purchased Sunflower, a meat carrier out of York, Nebraska, with about 45 power units and 100 trailers. Te purchase of Shaffer, a common carrier,


made it easier for Crete Carrier to become a common carrier as well in 1978, freeing it from the constraints laid on contract carriers. But by then, the trucking industry was about to undergo a change. Te debate over deregulation was reaching a new level, and Acklie was very much in favor of it despite all the money he had spent acquiring certificates. Unlike him, many in the industry opposed deregulation, reasoning they would face more competition while losing the assets they had


purchased through the ICC. Acklie attended a joint U.S. House and Senate committee hearing in Chicago. Before he testified, a couple of other executives offered him a ride back to the airport. Tat changed when they heard what he had to say.


had operating revenues of more than $50 million and was running 500 power units. But Acklie was careful not to grow too fast, reasoning, “You still couldn’t overrun your supply lines.” It would take another eight years for Crete


“VOLUME IS VANITY, AND PROFIT IS SANITY.”


“After I got done testifying there was a need


for deregulation, it would help the country in commerce, one of them said to me, ‘Find your own damn ride to the airport,’” he said. “Te people that were for regulation were really strongly in favor of it. ... In a month or two, that was all over, but at the time they were pretty darn serious. ... Everybody forgave and forgot.” By the end of fiscal year 1981, Crete Carrier


Carrier to reach 1,000 trucks. Acklie has never valued growth for growth’s sake. His goal has been to build a company, not inflate his ego. “I’ve always had one philosophy: Volume is


vanity, and profit is sanity. ... We have always looked at it, growth is


good, growth is necessary, but you shouldn’t grow unless you can make a profit,” he said. But while the company was growing slowly,


it was still growing. In 1987, Crete Carrier acquired Hilt Truck Line, a beverage hauling business that would serve as the family of companies’ owner-operator wing to go along with Crete’s dryvan operations, Shaffer’s refrigerated hauling, and Sunflower’s meat hauling business. Hilt started with about 50 trucks, grew to about 200, and then merged into Crete. Sunflower, meanwhile, was merged into Shaffer, while Shaffer became a division of Crete. In 1996, the company bought Hunt


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