Sometimes it takes a special partnership to make a small business not only get on track but stay moving in the right direction.
Just ask Jim Marmon, founder and chief executive officer of Team Drive-Away, a truck transport service provider that specializes in hauling semi-trucks for dealers across the United States and Canada.
When Marmon hired Scott Shacklett to be his company’s first chief operations officer in late 2006, the new CEO could only hope that the duo’s chemistry would prove to be a winner.
Today it would be hard to imagine the annual double-digit growth of Team Drive-Away—and the company’s nearly $20 million in earnings last year—without the highly productive working relationship of the two 42-year-olds at the helm.
“It’s a great partnership,” Marmon said.
And it’s one that seven years ago hinged on a pivotal interview question from Marmon: Could Shacklett effectively communicate with truck drivers?
“I asked Scott, ‘Can you talk to the CEO of a company and talk with the drivers as well?’” Marmon said. “Because that’s our bread and butter—those are the guys that make us or break us. If we don’t have the drivers, we’ve got nothing.
“I probably asked him that question 10 or 15 times during our first couple of hours together, because that’s really all that mattered. And once I felt good about where his heart was, I thought I had the right guy.”
Despite having no experience working with truck drivers, Shacklett’s honest “yes” came from the people skills he’d honed as an Air Force test engineer and later as a process improvement specialist for General Electric. Both jobs were in managerial roles, but Shacklett liked nothing better than rolling up his sleeves, leading by example and relating one-on-one with the front-line workers he depended on to make things happen every day.
‘People Matter’
The driver question was vital, Marmon said, because his previous partner for 12 years in another drive-away company chose to steer clear of the day-to-day matters of those behind the wheel.
“He didn’t want anything to do with operations, anything to do with people,” Marmon said of the former partner. “I was trying to maintain that people matter.”
Marmon sold his interest in the company and used the money to start Team Drive-Away, which began with Marmon, Shacklett and a bookkeeper working out of Marmon’s home. It was a shaky start.
“I’m a doer,” Marmon said. “You put a job in front of me, I’m just going to get it done—but I’m a terrible trainer. Basically, I was just making calls, and Scott was sitting at a card-table desk going, ‘OK, what’s this about?’ Slowly, I was dishing things off to Scott, but mostly the first couple of months were just me making contacts and recruiting drivers.”
“We hit the ground running with two or three drivers,” Shacklett said. “But because our office wasn’t done yet, we had our main phone number going to Jim’s cell phone. The problem was he’s calling drivers and getting interrupted all the time—everything’s going through that one little phone—and it was about to kill us. We didn’t have any organization. It wasn’t ready yet.”
“It was chaos,” Marmon said.
Making Connections
Gradually, disorder turned to order. In 2007, Marmon purchased a building in Perimeter Park in Shawnee.
Within a year, 35 drivers were signed up with Team Drive-Away, and Shacklett, who Marmon likes to say was “hired for his brains,” began working with software writers to develop computer programs that would bring greater organization and grow the company faster.
These days, Team Drive-Away works with 220 or more freelance drivers (who last year moved nearly 15,000 trucks more than 7.5 million miles for the company) and a bustling on-site staff of 20 dispatchers and salespeople. The goal is as simple as it is industrious: Picking up and dropping off semi-trucks being bought and sold across North America by ceaselessly making connections between different drivers and different trucks as quickly and efficiently as possible on behalf of different dealers or end customers.
“You’re on a treadmill, and it never stops,” Shacklett said.
“We’re only as good as our last load to both our customers and our drivers,” Marmon said.
Treating drivers with the same respect as customers is a prime component of the Team Drive-Away ethic. That’s why the company pays its drivers within 24 hours of making a delivery, and makes every effort to keep chronological pickup and drop-off assignments as geographically convenient as possible.
“If a driver drops off in Denver, don’t have them go to Chicago for their next pickup,” Shacklett said. “Try to find out what’s close. We’re always trying to connect. If you can pick up in Denver, that’s great, right?”
The individual needs of drivers are also addressed, like “the one driver we’ve got who’s completely homeless,” Shacklett said. “He doesn’t even have his own vehicle. So the pressure on the dispatcher is to always find him a truck.”
Another complicating factor is that drivers in the truck-hauling industry frequently work with several companies.
“We’re looking out for the driver as well as the end customer,” Shacklett said. “So we come across to the drivers this way: ‘Listen, man, you’ve got to make a living, right? And it’s our goal for you to make a living with us. But the reality is if you’re not making money, you’re going to quit. Or you’re going to do something dumb, because desperate people do desperate things. So if you’re running with multiple companies, that’s okay—let’s
just communicate.’”
“We are really a communication and customer service company that happens to move trucks for dealers,” Marmon said.
Biggs and Smalls
Through it all, Marmon and Shacklett have become friends. They even have nicknames for each other, most often used
while texting.
“He goes by Biggs,” Marmon said. “I go by Smalls.”
“I think I just started saying, ‘You’re killing me, Smalls,’ because that’s a movie line or something—and I weigh more,” Shacklett said.
Looking back, they admit to some early friction in how they regarded each other. Shacklett was levelheaded during times of stress. Marmon was the roller-coaster.
“His highs are high,” Shacklett said. “And when things are not good, they’re pretty low. So, initially, that really drove us crazy, because I don’t really see a reason to get all amped up about something.”
“He didn’t get as excited,” Marmon said.
“But his perception was I didn’t care,” Shacklett said.
Their increasing camaraderie trumped any misunderstandings. It also led to an extraordinary trust, which enabled Marmon to feel free enough to make a “bucket list” dream come true. From June 2011 to August 2012, he traveled across the country in a motor home with his wife and two homeschooled daughters, while Shacklett remained at the business to take on an enhanced leadership position.
“It was something I planned for 20 years in my mind,” Marmon said of his 13-month working vacation. “We did all 50 states. We flew to Hawaii for a couple weeks, and we flew to Alaska for a couple weeks. But it had to take a rock here in order for me to do that.”
Marmon and Shacklett kept in touch daily. The boss even had his mail shipped overnight to wherever he happened to be on the road. When he came back home to Team Drive-Away, things had changed in a way that benefited the partnership and the company.
“The year that he was gone went well enough so that our interaction after that was different,” Shacklett said. “He and I talked about a lot of stuff while he was away, but I’d made pretty much every decision. When he came back, at least for the first month, it was like he was a visitor.”
“Before that, I had to be a little more in control,” Marmon said. “I love my people and like to spend some time with them. But it’s also nice to have a little insulation, so you can work on the big things, the big picture stuff.
“And being gone really helped build the trust factor between Scott and the employees. They were like, ‘Hey, this guy can get it done. This is who I’m coming to.’ Even the people that I brought over from my old company—they were really tied to me—have refocused their energy to know that Scott is a good leader to have around.”
“I can’t remember the last time Jim and I really butted heads,” Shacklett said.
“All the trucks in the world are good, all the drivers in the world are good,” Marmon said. “But it doesn’t matter if we don’t communicate with each other and treat people right.”
