HOMEGROWN


Adams learned leadership through father, hard work


BY STEVE BRAWNER Contributing Writer


It’s probably too much to say Chad Adams was born to be a trucking company owner, but his rearing surely prepared him to be one. Adams, 38, the vice


president of Sterling Transportation Services, was born and raised in Broken Bow, a farming community in central Nebraska that was


home to about 4,000 people. His father, Lawrence Adams, and grandfather, Russ, and other family members owned a large cattle feeding operation, Adams Land and Cattle, that purchased cattle from across the country to be fed for market. Lawrence and wife Marilyn were also co-owners of a farming operation where the Adams family raised corn, alfalfa and hay. As a small child, Chad Adams remembers sitting in his father’s lap and steering the tractor. As he grew older, summers and weekends were spent alongside his younger brothers, Dan and Dave, feeding and checking cattle, farming and operating equipment. “I always enjoyed working and grew up being treated like other employees out


there – expected to do a lot and pull my own weight,” he said. Lawrence Adams said his son from


childhood demonstrated the traits to be a business leader.


“He was always a really hard worker and


always kind of took charge,” he said. “He was an Eagle Scout, and in Scouts he was a leader and always up and working with the younger Scouts and really doing a good job. And then growing up on the farm, when he was still in high school, he basically took over the haying operation and managed that and two or three other men on probably about 500 acres of hay through the summer, and (he) still did his activities in school and worked on the farm and cattle.” The experiences were invaluable in preparing Adams for the trucking industry. He grew up around heavy equipment and learned about hard work and responsibility. The cattle feeding and farming operation was a 24-7 business where the work did not stop until it was finished. Timing was critical in the haying operation; hay had to be bailed baled at the right time, even if that meant working in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, he was influenced by his dad, who he calls “the hardest working man I know.”


Continues NEBRASKA TRUCKER — ISSUE 5, 2016 — www.nebtrucking.com 13


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