“It’s fun to listen to Chuck talk to “WE FEEL IT IS OUR DUTY THAT IF ANY DRIVER


DECIDES TO LEAVE US FOR GREENER PASTURES THAT THEY ARE A BETTER PROFESSIONAL WHEN THEY LEAVE THAN THEY WERE WHEN THEY CAME IN.”


—FRED FRASER, DIRECTOR OF SAFETY, MC EXPRESS


friends over the telephone.” Tina smiled in agreement. “He was


my contact guy. He convinced me to do all kinds of crazy things like give him all my rates from all the other truck- ing companies.” Interrupting, Mitchell said “And then I helped you save some money! I’d make you a good deal and make you look good. “She said she needed to talk to


someone higher up than me, and I said, ‘girl, you can talk to anybody in here you want to, but if I tell you we don’t have a truck, trust me, nobody is going to tell you we do because I’m really good at what I do. I can let you talk to my dad.’” Mimicking their conversation he continued, “Well, who’s your dad? He’s the ‘M’ in MDR. Oh, no he’s not!” “We became best friends,” Tina


said. “We would talk…I don’t know, five to ten times a day.” “Once to take care of business, the


rest of the time just to flirt,” Mitchell joked. “That raspy voice—I just loved to talk to her. Especially on Fridays because she’d go to those bars in Ohio and Friday mornings she’d be real raspy.” Their long distance relationship


was supported by Mitchell’s clever dis- patching. “Tina and I were dating, and she lived in Ohio and I lived here. I was off work Tuesday and Wednesday, so I’d work all day Monday, jump in the truck and drive to Michigan so I could swing by and see her and then drive back in time to go to work Thursday. And I got paid extra. I got paid to go see my girl.” While courting Tina, Mitchell con-


tinued working for MDR. He had always hoped to take over the company. “I told them, ‘Hey, when you’re ready to back


32


off, I’ll take this thing and you can just keep making your living and I’ll move up in the world.’” But it didn’t work out that way.


Too many of the MDR heirs wanted to buy in so Mitchell left to start his own company. “MC Express was just a dormant


piece of authority,” Mitchell said. “Tina and I were getting married, and I asked her if she wanted to go into business. She said, ‘Whatever.’ I bought the authority, we made it active and bought trucks. But I can’t take all the credit,” he said with a nod to Tina. It wasn’t easy, Mitchell admits, and


he offers this piece of advice to anyone considering starting a trucking com- pany: “Don’t.”


FROM THE GROUND UP Tina and Chuck Mitchell officially


opened the doors of MC Express with two trucks in October of 1994, just a month after getting married. And they have shared an office since day one. “Now I work this way,” Lisa said


pointing to the left, “and he works that way,” pointing to the right, “but we’ve worked in the same office for 22 years.” “We started out in the Bat Cave—


that’s the windowless shed-style build- ing over there,” Mitchell said. “We just finished our third year here, and we built it planning to stay like this, work- ing together.” But it’s not just Tina and Chuck


representing the Mitchell family at MC Express. Tanner, their oldest son, and Mitchell’s brother both work in the office, too. Moreover, Mitchell treats all the employees like family.


the drivers on the phone,” Tina said. “They’ll call and he knows every single one of them by name. Hanging up the phone, Chuck always says, ‘I love you man.’ It’s a cool relationship he has with everybody.” “Without them, you ain’t got any-


thing,” Mitchell added. “Most of them [drivers] I see in passing. They all stop in and wave, and say ‘hi.’ Of course if they’ve got questions about payroll, they call me. I like it when they stop by though.” Making sure his employees feel val-


ued equally is one of the toughest parts of running a small business, Mitchell said. “You can’t always do what you want to for your employees. You have to treat them all the same. You can’t have favorites and do more for one than you do the other, not that that’s a bad thing. It’s just you can have someone work for you for 15 years and then something happens, and you become an SOB. That part’s tough.” Even more challenging, however,


is staying up to date on the always- changing regulations of the trucking industry. Most pressing to Mitchell are the 14-hour rule and the electronic log mandate. Current FMCSA rules limit truckers


to a 14-hour ‘driving window,’ wherein a driver is allowed a period of 14 con- secutive hours in which to drive up to 11 hours after being off duty for 10 or more consecutive hours. “You’ve taken common sense out


of being able to drive a truck,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know what the exact answer is, but there needs to be a way to stop the 14-hour clock under certain situations. If you go to a shipper and sit for three hours…if you had to drive at all that morning, you lose that three hours. If you unload and it takes three hours, then you drive across town and that’s another three hours, well that’s six hours that’s gone. And now you’re tired, but if you go to sleep, you lose the rest of your time. If something is done about that, I think it’ll be the greatest thing they ever did.”


Issue 6 2016 | ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT


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