“I MIGHT SIT IN THE DESK AND DISPATCH TRUCKS TODAY, AND I MIGHT DRIVE TOMORROW, AND I MIGHT RUN A FORKLIFT THE NEXT DAY. JUST A LOT OF DIFFERENT THINGS AND A LOT OF EXCITEMENT.”
destination. “I moved there sight unseen, so you
can imagine my shock from coming off the beach and driving across the desert and coming up I-10 in July and turning north at Fort Stockton in 100-and-something degrees,” he said. “And the town’s getting progressively smaller and the smell of the oilfield’s progressively stronger, and it hap- pened to be a year that the locusts were out, and they were covering the roads, and I probably thought I was driving into the bowels of hell.” B&D Services owned several trucks
and began adding 18-wheelers, forklifts, winch trucks and other vehicles as it
worked for a larger oilfield carrier. Musgraves worked full-time. Thompson was a drilling superintendent for Fluor Corp., so he would work 30 days offshore and 30 days in Hobbs. When the larger oil- field carrier went out of business in the mid-1980s, the two began looking for another hauler and settled with E.L. Farmer in 1987. The arrangement was like a franchise agreement. B&D Services owned and operated its own trucks and solicited business but ran under E.L. Farmer’s authority and under its insurance while posting Farmer’s signs on its doors. E.L. Farmer sent the invoices. The company hauled all sizes of loads:
as large as casing and tubing using 18-wheelers, and other cargo using smaller vehicles, including tools needed immedi- ately. It even hot-shotted drilling permits to Oklahoma for a customer that needed them. The phone rang at all hours, includ- ing at Musgraves’ home. Kristi and her mother, Patsy Thompson, also worked for the company in Hobbs, so it was a family affair.
Musgraves enjoyed the business. He
liked the people, the planning, making things happen for customers, and solving problems hands on. “I might sit in the desk and dispatch
trucks today, and I might drive tomorrow, and I might run a forklift the next day. Just a lot of different things and a lot of excite- ment,” he said. E.L. Farmer can document its roots as
far back as 1910 but may have existed as early as 1903. Ernest Lafayette Farmer started the company in Vinton, Louisiana, using mule teams to haul logs, build roads and do construction work. He moved to Breckenridge, Texas, prior to 1925 and fin- ished two railroads. He sold his mule teams
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TRAILER
24 Issue 3, Fall 2016
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