The Sentinel from Carlisle, Pennsylvania • 26

4 The Sentinel, Carlisle, Thursday, February 26, 1987 Who is ABF? Firm part of publicly-held Arkansas company rrlfn jr Li i and meeting schedules. If you have an accident, you lose customers and these companies can't afford to do that because it's so incredibly competitive. Safety is a business question it's absolutely critical to survival." Verification of ABF's safety record can be found in rankings of major carriers kept by the federal government's Office of Motor Carrier. But Jerry Donaldson of the Center for Auto Safety says the office's rankings are inconclusive because they are based on voluntary reporting by the trucking industry. Donaldson says the office "genuflects" to the trucking industry, which he said is marked by "fraud and misrepresentation." A November 1985 Washington Monthly article included 1983 testimony to the Senate CommmerceCommitttee from'an insurance executive who says: "It is widely known and accepted within the highway safety community that the Bureau of Motor Carrier Safety is a tiny, understaffed, underfunded, undermotivated creature (with a) responsibility totally out of proportion to its size." Since 1985, the responsibility of monitoring trucks on Pennsylvania's highways has rested largely with the state, PennDOT officials say.

As for ABF, Donaldson admits he'd "never heard" of the company. Larger carriers, he adds, usually have "fairly good safety records and not a lot of fraud at the major levels." Perry Desmond, managing editor of Philadelphia-based Commercial Carrier Journal. The Journal has been publishing news related to the trucking industry since 1911. As of 1985, Desmond says ABF ranked ninth among U.S. common carriers.

"They have to be a reputable company to be that big, to have shown a growth pattern as they have shown over the years," Desmond says. "Since deregulation trucking has become a cutthroat business, very service oriented. And if you don't provide the service, you're dead. These people, among others, have been winners." Rick Smith of the Teamsters Democratic Union a dissident Teamsters offshoot notes that ABF has started a "quality of life" program for employees. "A lot of other carriers have tried to go with something similar," Smith says.

"ABF's reputation has been fairly good." But Smith says the company's growth means "They're playing with the big boys now. My experience is they will get a little harder style of management as they grow." ABF says its self-description of "Safety First" is "more than a slogan." The company says it is "consistently rated among the best in the motor carrier industry" and that ATA "recently selected ABF's safety program as the industry's best." "ABF has been involved with our own safety department quite a lot," Dreyfuss says. "Most of the larger (companies) are extremely careful. 1 It's too costly (to have an accident) in terms of reputation, insurance By Dan Miller Staff writer ABF Freight Systems Inc. is seen by friends and skeptics alike as a rising star in the trucking industry.

Formed in 1935, ABF is the largest subsidiary of Arkansas Best a publicly held company based in Fort Smith, Ark. It is known as "ABZ" on the New York Stock Exchange. Arkansas Best also owns Riverside Furniture Corp. and ABC Treadco, a tire retread firm. However, its largest subsidiary is ABF which had total revenues of $685 million in 1986.

Trucking firm revenue for '87 is projected at $770 million. According to the company, ABF started in 1935 with "10 employees, three trucks, three terminals, limited route authority in two states and first-year revenues of $50,000." By 1951, ABF still known as Arkansas Motor Freight was a 20-terminal operation with revenues nearing $1 million. Robert A. Young Jr. purchased the firm that same year.

Robert A. Young III is ABF's president today. Acquisitions during 1977 and 1978 boosted the company from 25th to 9th place among U.S. regulated interstate motor freight carriers. The firm's Middlesex Township operation was started during the 1978 period of rapid growth.

The terminal here opened with four employees, manager Roy Slagle recalls. Today, ABF's 98-door Middlesex facility employs 439, including 208 over-the-road drivers. The terminal's yearly payroll is nearly $15 million. By 1980, ABF's revenues totaled nearly $340 million. In that year, Neil Goldschmidt, Jimmy Carter's secretary of transportation, began to usher in deregulation of the American trucking industry.

Deregulation removed government protection over carriers, replacing it with competition. Today, a proliferation of Department of Transportation regulations still exist concerning trucking, but gone are operating authorities that gave carriers rights to certain routes. Gone as well are collectively set rates that had been immune from government anti-trust laws. The "shake-out" since deregulation has led to the formation of 12,400 new trucking operations, most of them small. The resulting overcapacity has led to the overall trucking market share being concentrated more and more among the top 10 carriers.

For example, before 1980 the top 10 held 32 percent of total revenues and 48 percent of profits from less-than-truckload operations. As of 1984, the top 10 held 47 percent in revenues and 69 percent of total less-than-truckload profits. Today, the "Big Three" in common carrier trucking are Yellow Freight, Consolidated Freightways and Roadway Services. ABF in 1985 ranked itself sixth industry-wide. Wall Street financial reports say the company is "rapidly expanding" its nationwide terminal network.

According to Value Line, ABF opened 30-35 terminals' in 1986, for a total of 285. Another 36 including the planned 300-door Carlisle terminal are proposed for 1987. This expansion is being funded partly by a $50 million convertible debenture offering. According to the 1986 Issue 103 of the Official Motor Carrier Directory, ABF operates in all 50 states. The directory describes ABF's service as "thru-trailer service via interchange at principal terminals." It also notes ABF carries high explosives and is approved for the American Trucking Association's Hazardous Materials Tariff.

ABF is among "a handful that are very large and nationwide in scope. It's in the top 10, maybe even in the top five or six," says Bob Dreyfuss, a spokesman for ATA, which serves as a trucking industry lobbyist. "As far as overall reputation, ABF is one of the major common carriers in the U.S.," Dreyfuss says. "It's not just another major trucking company." "They are a very reputable company as far as we know," says Barrentine vs. ABF went to US Supreme Court served Barrentine.

It held that his pre-trip check was a "principal" activity of his employment requiring compensation. Dissenting were then-Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice William Rehnquist, who sided with the lower court view. "We won the battle but we may have lost the war," says Arthur Fox, the lawyer with the Public Citizen Litigation group who represented Barrentine. "It was not a class action suit we had to bring it on behalf of the individual." Barrentine was compensated, but other drivers may still be doing pre-trip checks for which they are not paid. Fox doesn't know what ABF's systemwide policy is on pre-trip checks today.

around $40,000 to $50,000 each at the time. "The last-minute walk-around inspections that they made averaged about lVfe per day," he says. "ABF calculated that they took about five minutes each. So the pay for the walk-around would have been based at minimum wage a small amount of money." The Supreme Court record shows the company refused to pay drivers for pre-trip safety inspections of rigs. Lower courts did not side with drivers, saying the case should be addressed within the collective-bargaining agreement reached between ABF and the Teamsters.

But the high court disagreed, saying the collective-bargaining agreement had not adequately Contradicting ABF and industry backers, Fox says, "These carriers are all trying to save a nickel here and a nickel there and it usually comes out of safety. "I'm not singling ABF out," he says. "But being better then the next guy doesn't mean you're very good, given the industry's abysmal record of accidents and fatalities. ABF's spokesman says the Barrentine case was settled out-of-court about a year ago with the drivers receiving "a very nominal amount of money in the hundreds of dollars for each driver." As for ABF's position on the issue, he says, "The company's practice is as all other companies with Teamsters contracts. The last-minute walk-around is covered as part of the driver's total pay." "walk-around inspection" mandated by the U.S.

Department of Transportation and required by ABF. "The driver walks around the rig to make a final visual inspection such as if the lights are working after the truck has been gone over thoroughly by the maintenance department," he says. ABF's representative says the Supreme Court ruled the pay was not covered under the collective bargaining agreement but it might be covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The justices sent it back to the lower court on that issue. "The Fair Labor Standards Act deals with minimum wages, which were around $2.50 an hour at the time of the case," the spokesman adds.

Those drivers were making By Dan Miller and Carol Talley Staff writers ABF's record shows involvement in a court battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The case involved whether drivers had to be paid for the time it takes to make truck safety checks before starting delivery runs. The 1981 suit was filed by Lloyd Barrentine, who still is a driver with ABF at its Little Rock, terminal. An ABF spokesman says the case involved "five drivers" but Barrentine's name was listed first.

"The case had nothing to do with safety," adds the spokesman at the company's headquarters in Fort Smith, Ark. He describes the check as a.