Did you know that longtime trucking executive Shannon Everett is a free agent for the first time in more than two decades?
Everett, who served in a variety of executive positions including CFO, COO and President at Rich Logistics in Little Rock, left the company earlier this year. Rich Logistics was bought in 2014 by Roadrunner Transportation Systems of Downers Grove, Illinois, a company lurching through millions in losses after a financial scandal involving three executives in 2017.
Roadrunner announced in September it would lay off 450 employees and close five terminals; many of the affected were Rich Logistics drivers in Little Rock. Everett, 39, said he and Roadrunner attempted to renegotiate his contract, including a noncompete clause, but the two sides couldn’t come to terms.
“My deciding factor was our inability to compete with U.S. trucking companies employing foreign drivers on work visas,” Everett said in a statement he read to Whispers.
Everett didn’t elaborate. Rich does a lot of cross-border transport with Mexico as do a host of other companies, including PAM Transport Services Inc. of Tontitown.
Everett said there were other complications in his departure from Roadrunner and Rich.
One notable complication is the $37 million lawsuit that his father, Paul Keith Everett, filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court last summer alleging that Roadrunner and Rich reneged on a two-year contract with his PKE Western Trucking Leasing because of the “personal animus” of Roadrunner’s COO, who has since left the company.
“Like I said, complications,” Shannon Everett said.
It was a difficult decision leaving the company he has spent most of his adult life working for, Everett said.
He said he plans to stay in the trucking industry and has several opportunities he is exploring.
“It was not made lightly at all,” Everett said. “I think it was the right decision given the circumstances. I love the people over there at that place. It has been great to me.”
Roadrunner’s new financial tightening also led to the departure of another Arkansas executive. David O’Neal, who had been with the Arkansas Trucking Association since 2015, joined the company less than one year ago as its vice president of safety; he was to oversee safety programs for all of Roadrunner’s subsidiaries while working, coincidentally, out of the Rich Logistics’ offices.
Well, Roadrunner is currently shedding as many of its asset-heavy subsidiaries that it can — three have been sold in the past few months — and that left O’Neal with less to oversee.
“That was Roadrunner’s perspective,” said O’Neal, who left at the end of January. “My position was eliminated as part of the company’s continued downsizing of their business units.”
Rich Logistics, a trucking business (which means it has assets), is commonly understood to be for sale, industry insiders told Whispers.
Roadrunner is focused on its core asset-light logistics division in hopes of turning around the financial freefall; it reported a loss of $266.7 million for the first quarters of fiscal 2019 in November.