Coming out of the Great Recession's years of soft freight and slow economic growth, owner-operator Adam Johnson and fellow personnel at his family's K&D Transport small fleet had a stroke of inspiration. It had been a long time coming.
Johnson, a fourth-generation truck operator increasingly involved in ownership and management of the third-generation family business, was with his family essentially staring down the barrel of closing their doors in 2012. Over the course of the big economic contraction in prior years, former $6-$7-per-mile oversize contracts with 48-foot flatbeds turned to a paltry $2.50 a mile in many instances. The 2012 year "was probably the worst year we ever had," Johnson said. And as the year began the company just "didn’t know how bad it was going to get."
The stroke of inspiration: "I sold all my trailers," he said, which were 48-foot flats and step decks, and "ordered brand-new 53-foot Wilson flats." As shown in the picture at the top, with the company's stretch Kenworths, "we came up with the idea that if we put a steel coil in the center of the trailer," essentially a full load of palletized foam insulation could fit around the coil and still remain under weight limits. Johnson, with two owner-operators leased to the company, implemented the idea, and that outside-the-box thinking allowed the company to thrive when so many other fleets were struggling just to get by.
An example -- behind Johnson's first Kenworth, a 2003 W900, powered by a 1999 Cummins Signature 600, 13 speed transmission, 3.55 rears, and with a 335-inch wheelbase.
Since then, Johnson's assumed a greater portion of the management of operations at K&D with his father, who still does a lot of the dispatching. Over four years, K&D Transport doubled in size to 12 trucks as of the end of 2022, adding more operators this year even as freight volumes have softened. It's a testament to creative thinking that K&D is among five semi-finalists in the 11-30-truck division of Overdrive's Small Fleet Championship.
This is one of 10 Small Fleet Champ semi-finalist profiles that will run throughout this month.
"We hauled lumber down to Chicago," Johnson said, loading the coils and insulation there for the trip back to Minnesota.
