doing so, the world. Fuller was nominated by Robert Dooley, dean of UTC’s College of Business, and made the list for pioneering innovation and technology in trucking — an industry that was already considered “mature” 30 years ago. Fuller’s fellow top 100 leaders include
Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, Colin Powell, former U.S. secretary of state, and Tommy Franks, retired U.S. Army general. Fuller brings a distinct Chattanooga
flair to the elite roster of who’s-who names. On one recent morning, the floor-to-ceiling, south-facing windows in Fuller’s office opened onto a steady, cold rain and the slow-moving traffic on Interstate 75 below. In the distance, misty clouds shrouded the hooked horn of Lookout Mountain, around 13 miles away as the crow flies — and around 17 miles away as the truck drives. Fuller is Chattanooga, through and
through. Born here to a trucking stalwart in his own right, Clyde Fuller, Max grew up here and stayed here for college. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the Uni- versity of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and went on to work for his father’s company, Southwest Motor Freight. Fuller and his brother, David Parker
(whose mother married Clyde Fuller after the death of Parker’s father) rose in the ranks at Southwest Motor Freight through the early ‘80s, before leaving the com- pany after it was sold in the middle of the decade. In 1986, Fuller and Parker — with
assistance from their father — started separate trucking companies. Parker started Covenant Transport. Fuller part- nered with former Southwest Motor Freight lawyer Pat Quinn and started U.S. Xpress. Covenant, headquartered in Lookout Valley and headed by Parker, has grown to operate more than 2,700 trucks and 6,700 trailers, and is traded publicly. U.S. Xpress is headed by Fuller. Quinn,
who served as co-chairman and president at U.S. Xpress, succumbed to illness in 2011. U.S. Xpress today operates 7,000 trac-
tors and more than 19,000 trailers. The company has grown rapidly, so fast that officials took it public in 1994 to finance its growth. In 2007, U.S. Xpress was de-listed and again went private. And the key all along has been innova-
tion, and the dare-to-think-different helms- man in Fuller who hasn’t been afraid to test new waters.
When Max Fuller was a student at UTC
and working for Southwest Motor Freight, he discovered the electronic calculator. It was smaller, faster and quieter than its mechanical predecessors. Fuller could see its potential. His father, not so much. “I went and bought one of these little
electronic calculators, and he didn’t believe it would give us accurate information,” remembers Max of Clyde’s reaction. “So he wouldn’t pay for it.” Clyde Fuller was of a different time
and mindset, of a paper and pen mentality, and of a brute force and grind approach to work. He pioneered American long-haul trucking, but he never gave up his Reming- ton 99 calculator. Max Fuller never set out to reinvent the
18-wheeler and the long-haul industry; he set out to perfect it and build on what men like his father had already done. Sitting around listening to the Werners,
Hunts, Acklies and Gerdins, Fuller soaked up their decades of experience and heeded their words of advice. “Since I was the younger guy, they were
kind of leading me along,” he said. “I was getting a collection of 20, 30 best ideas. I was looking for a nugget of knowledge.”
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24
TENNESSEE TRUCKING NEWS
Q3 2015
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