Heavy Duty Trucking, June 2017

HDT JUNE 2017 88 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM When Eric Fuller and Lisa Quinn Pate embarked on the task of building their management team at U S Xpress they soon realized that drivers and technicians are not the only groups suffering from a lack of new talent in this industry As we look at a lot of our peers they have near retirement level management teams and are looking for talent to backfill that says CEO Eric Fuller I think theyre not finding all the way up to the executive level the type of talent they need to fill those positions Earlier this year Fuller was named CEO and Quinn Pate was named president and chief administrative officer of the Chattanooga Tennessee based truckload fleet It was the culmination of a five year leadership transition process for the company founded in 1986 by their fathers Max Fuller who remains as executive chairman and the late Pat Quinn To address the issue last year U S Xpress launched a two year leadership development program called Xpress Elite designed to identify high potential employees inside and outside of the company and develop them into future leaders The program recently took top honors for Innovation in Deployment of Leadership Programs in HR coms Leadership Excellence And Development LEAD awards beating out names such as Amazon Dell and FedEx Xpress Elite participants rotate through various company departments including operations safety maintenance sales and more They go through a variety of leadership training classes mentoring programs and business challenges Once theyve successfully completed the program participants are placed in leadership roles in the company based on current business needs and where each person best fits Participants get about 1400 hours of training and 24 mentoring sessions explains Ralph Romero director of talent management One thing thats unique a lot of people talk about mentors but the ones here are all executive leaders vice president or above Plus a dedicated career coach focuses on leadership and soft skills development Typical employees might get a review once a year Romero says but the Xpress Elite participants get one each quarter during the two year program So the level of feedback and transparency is very very high The program also features eight networking Building the next high performance management team U S Xpress recently brought home several honors from HR coms Leadership Excellence And Development LEAD awards U S Xpress looks for authentic progressive big thinkers for its award winning Xpress Elite programevents with Fuller and Quinn Pate who spend time talking to the participants about where they see opportunities for the company to invest and grow As Quinn Pate explains I think making sure that folks going into that program get to know us get to know what were looking for know our personalities and philosophies is important for them and for us Many of the participants in the program are recruited from other businesses such as insurance or manufacturing or were previously in the military These generally arent fresh out of college employees but people who already have many skills and experience In addition Romero notes Theyre bringing in best practices from other industries that maybe weve never thought about before The first class started in June of 2016 A second class started in January and a third class is going to start this month Our goal is to make sure this company is seen as a top employer locally and nationally that its seen as a privilege to work here says Quinn Pate By Deborah Lockridge Editor in Chief dlockridge@ truckinginfo com FLEET SNAPSHOT Who U S Xpress Inc Where Chattanooga Tennessee Fleet 7000 tractors 15500 trailers Operations Nationwide truckload and dedicated operations plus asset based brokerage Fun Fact One of the first truckload fleets to fully integrate satellite communications Challenge Creating a pipeline for up and coming management talent FLEET TALK PHOTO DEBORAH LOCKRIDGE