ways to help you. Somebody asked me why I stuck around so long. I don’t know. I like my job, I’m home every night, and they are just good people. I still like my job. I’m getting old, but I still like the job.”
BEING DIFFERENT Outside the McConnells’ home in
northern Pulaski County, a large tram- poline with protective netting around it is home to at least a dozen balls of vari- ous sports, plus a basketball goal that’s adjusted for acrobatic dunking even for a 7-year-old. The three boys attend Central Arkansas Christian Academy; Erin is able to work out of her house while it’s quiet, which isn’t often. “It’s
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wild and crazy, but fun,” she said. “Oh my goodness, we never know what’s going to happen in a day.” Erin notes that Hugh starts every
day early reading the Bible. The family attends Levy Church of Christ. Meanwhile, the family at
McConnell & Son consists of several drivers who have worked there for eight to 10 years, Erin said, and most are past the five-year mark. A bond seems to develop among the drivers and the McConnells; Erin said that one recent departure of a veteran driver, because of a relocation to another part of the country, moved her to tears. “We have a good relationship with all of our drivers,” she said. “Hugh sees
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them way more than I do. We know some better, some we don’t. The ones who can’t hang with doing things the right way, and all the safety rules, they don’t tend to stay around. But the ones who do … It’s not perfect by any means, but we have a very good relationship with our families.” “We try,” Hugh adds. “We want to be different,” he said.
“We want the place that we work to be different. We want to treat people different. We want to treat our custom- ers different. We set that expectation pretty high for the way we treat people. Sometimes the work isn’t ours, it’s been given to us, and we’ve got to do some- thing bigger with it. It’s his [God’s], we’re just managing it. He has blessed us with that opportunity.” Hugh’s own efforts simply to knock
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“on somebody’s door” early in his driv- ing career led to business that’s never stopped growing, Erin said. Growth has required the addition of more staff dur- ing the past decade. Hugh McConnell is hesitant to name business associates and specific jobs the company has been involved with, but he says, “There is a lot of work out there. You can see it when you drive up and down the inter- state. Anytime mud hits the ground, anytime concrete hits the ground, we’re trying to have a piece of it. Everybody knows what we do; they can see our trucks.” The McConnells’ business extends
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into all of Arkansas’ contiguous states, but with an emphasis on jobs within the state’s borders. “Highway funding has started
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to come in. There is a lot of develop- ing going on just here in the Central Arkansas region. That’s always a plus,” Hugh McConnell said. “Housing is kind of steady, so that’s good. It’s not boom- ing, but it hasn’t fallen off. We’ll take steady. Steady is always better.” Hugh McConnell leans on one
important lesson his father passed along. “Dad always said, do one thing and do it extremely well. We’re still try- ing to do it extremely well.”
ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT | Issue 5 2014
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