trucks hauling heavy, oversize and oilfield equipment. It hauls primarily up and down the Gulf Coast for major oilfield companies like Halliburton and Shell. Superior, mean- while, is one of the largest delivery services in Houston and is expanding into the Dallas market. Walker said the company is on call 24
hours a day, seven days a week, with cus- tomers calling at all hours asking for trucks to haul pipe on irregular routes. Many of his drivers have worked many years for the company. Drivers, he said, should be respected and treated like family. “They need to feel like they’re part of
your team,” he said. “We’ve got some great drivers that have worked for us for a long time, and I mean, just good people. You have to express to them that they’re impor- tant to you. You’ve got to show them that you appreciate them. You just can’t take them for granted and say, ‘Oh, he’s just a truck driver.’ We don’t treat our truck driv- ers that way. We want them to feel like they’re important to our business.” Walker says that every day is differ-
ent, but each day begins the same – with a
look at the previous day’s events: revenue, deadhead costs, how many trucks ran load- ed and empty, etc. The company has a sales meeting each Monday. “Then I sit and lis- ten to my boys who are now working for me tell me how I need to work harder,” he said.
Those sons, like Walker, all graduated
from Texas A&M. In fact, Walker started a family tradition. He has nine brothers and sisters, and they, like him, graduated from there. He and six others married Aggies. Of his parents’ 28 grandkids, 21 have gone to A&M, with the others still too young for college. Not surprisingly, his parents, John Henry Walker Jr. and Mary Jo, were Aggie Parents of the Year in 1976, an award won by Johnny and his wife Lea Ann in 2009. “It’s the greatest university in the
whole country, bar none,” he said. “You have to have gone to A&M to understand what I just said.” Of Walker’s four sons, three of them
work for the company. The oldest, Houston, is chief financial officer. He and Walker’s second oldest son, Joe, the compa- ny’s sales manager, both have master’s
degrees in accounting, and both went to work for Price Waterhouse. After a few years, Houston came to Walker saying he was quitting his job and would like to work for him and eventually become the compa- ny’s controller. Walker told him he would give him a job, but the controller’s job was already taken. Soon the controller went to his home state of Louisiana for a couple of weeks and then called saying he was retir- ing. Three months after coming to work for the company, Houston became its control- ler and chief financial officer. The third son, Jefferson, works in operations. He sold steel for a hydraulic hose company but decided to work for the family business soon after. The youngest, Justin, is still a student at Texas A&M. “To be honest with you, I never envi-
sioned that it would be a family business,” Walker said. “I don’t think I ever really pushed it to my sons that that’s what I expected out of them. I didn’t want them to think that they had to do what I did. I mean, they needed to go and do what they wanted to do in life, just like I went and did what I wanted to do, and I didn’t want
FREIGHTLINER
SPRINTER VANS
WESTERN STAR
Houston Freightliner, Sterling, Western Star 9550 North Loop East Houston, TX 77029
Phone (713) 672-4115 Fax (713) 672-9449
Beaumont Freightliner, Sterling, Western Star 6975 South Major Dr. Beaumont, TX 77705
Phone (409) 951-8300 Fax (409) 951-8399
Corpus Christi Freightliner, Sterling, Western Star 8001 IH 37
Corpus Christi, TX 78409 Phone (361) 694-8400 Fax (361) 694-8499
30 Summer 2016
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