By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit, C.W. Express owner Steve Wilson, headquartered in the Louisville, Kentucky, metro area across the Ohio River in Sellersburg, Indiana, had made good on a goal set in his late teens. He was 40 years into a trucking career, his company at 13 tractors and 15 van trailers, and Wilson himself managed the large majority of the operation with a solid team of drivers. "I was dispatch, accounting, payroll," he said.
Mechanic, too. Wilson grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, son of a mechanic who worked for a variety of trucking companies and who drove himself. When Wilson was 17, his dad and uncle relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, where the pair were working with a company called All Freight at the time, May 1980. Wilson joined his father and uncle, and "I can remember sitting in the office," he said, listening to his uncle take calls from drivers. "My uncle would always know what was wrong with the truck."
Wilson told himself, "You know, I want to know that," to know a truck inside and out such that he could make an effective, accurate diagnosis over the phone.
After all the years that have followed in trucking -- including many years leasing multiple trucks to his father's company and others, then launching C.W. Express with a partner (not involved in the business anymore) in November 2007, not the absolute bottom of freight markets during the long recessionary period of those times, but close -- he's there.
"They can call me to diagnose something, and I figure it out," Wilson said. "That's what I wanted to do" back at age 17. "I wanted to be the guy they come to, and I know what's wrong with it."
C.W. Express owner Steve Wilson in the back office
The driver had to be towed to a shop en route. The shop couldn't get it running.
Personnel told Wilson they needed to order a tool. Next day, they needed a part -- the cable from the battery all the way to starter, they said. All 10 feet of it.
He asked for a picture of what they wanted to replace. Turns out it wasn't the long cable in question, just a corroded ground cable between one battery and another.
"I was upset," he said. "You can get this part at AutoZone."
He asked the technician to unhook one of the batteries and -- "yeah, the truck runs just fine," he said. They fixed the ground cable, and "charged me $3,000," Wilson said. "I can't help how they do you on the road."
He can sure get the truck running, though.
Wilson and his C.W. Express fleet, now at 17 trucks and 32 dry vans hauling mostly automotive-supply-chain freight, is among semi-finalists for Overdrive's Small Fleet Champ award in the 11-30-truck division.
[Related: Meet Overdrive's 2024 Small Fleet Champ semi-finalists]
New team-building prowess, growth, after clawing back from near-disaster
This is one of several Small Fleet Champ semi-finalist profiles that will air throughout this month. (Access all of the published profiles via this link.) Two finalists in each category (3-10 trucks, 11-30 trucks) will be announced in October.
Newcomb's seen firsthand his know-how when it comes to everything that has to do with a truck or trailer.
C.W.'s on dedicated lanes in the automotive supply chain of Ford Motor Company, a share of the more than 100 lanes currently handled by Avenger (a subsidiary of Mode Global). "We work around the clock" for the dedicated customer, said Newcomb. "Carrier partners we want to essentially own their lanes." The times Wilson's had a breakdown, she added, "he sends his own recoveries, and he's communicated recoveries to tow truck drivers along completely different lanes," handled by other carriers, "for me. He doesn't need to be on-site to tell you what's wrong" with the truck.
Wilson's success post-pandemic has been far from 100% certain, though. In late 2021 his son, Steven the second, surprised him with a trip to Green Bay, Wisconsin, to see the Packers play Wilson's favored Cleveland Browns on Christmas Day. Green Bay, unfortunately for Wilson, eeked out a win. Also sadly, Wilson came back from the trip with a case of COVID-19.
By January 6 he was in the ICU.
He ended up having a blood clot in a valve that feeds the intestinal tract as a complication, requiring later surgery to remove parts of the small intestine. "They stuck me in a coma for three weeks and took out 14 inches of small intestine," Wilson said, saving his life. "I got sepsis twice," and during that his right leg didn't get enough blood circulation. "They never let me see it, and then one day it was a stump."
Doctors amputated the leg below the knee, and Wilson would remain in the hospital for a sizable portion of that entire year, 2022.
And though Wilson prides himself on taking close care of every aspect of the business, it's clear he had the team in place to step up when it was do or die. "I took charge of the schedule for the drivers," said Erin Newcomb, by then a close partner with C.W. Express. "He had 10 drivers on our accounts" at the time, and "I helped take over and communicate what they were doing, talking to them daily."
She worked closely with Wilson's wife, Tina, too, "to make it seamless for her to continue invoicing and continue paying the drivers" what they were due for the work, she said.
It was touch and go in the spring of 2022. At times, Newcomb said, "we didn’t know if he was going to live."
Wilson said the docs told him he was a veritable "miracle" to have survived, and today, he's outfitted with a prosthetic limb and doing well.
Owner Wilson (right) is pictured here with some of the company's trucks and his son, Steven the second, increasingly involved in the business's back office.
Better yet, he's leaned on the team as the company grows to better delegate and prep for future growth. "I used to do everything -- maintenance, dispatch," and so much more. He's since hired a full-time mechanic, and his "son's in the office taking more of a role. ... I've purchased 5 more trucks since then, and 7 or 8 more trailers."
[Related: Bitterman Trucking bounces back to build on long, strong trucking legacy]
Expansion led to a new company headquarters, too, in Sellersburg. It's a former driver-training facility with more than enough space to accommodate all of the C.W. Express equipment and more.
When automotive plants shut down for extended periods around end-of-year holidays annually, C.W. works a longstanding contract with UPS to reposition trailers in their network, which extends back to 2012 (it's handled now by Coyote Logistics, since UPS bought them). "We move 1,000 trailers" around the holiday, he said. "Afterward, we return them where they need them."
The new headquarters facility will help support that work, too, with a place to stage trailers destined for repositioning, he said. He's invested in bulk fuel there to sometimes save over what's available on the road, and has talked recently with a parking provider about leasing some of the extra space for truck parking, a potential new revenue stream.
The new C.W. Express headquarters, which Wilson and company moved into in fairly recent times, includes more than enough space to accommodate company equipment, offering plenty opportunity for future expansion.
The trucks, the drivers, the support
C.W. Express runs a mix of equipment, much of it on the older side (where Wilson can best exercise his maintenance know-how), though he knows that as time goes on, pre-emissions equipment will be harder and harder to find. Prepping for that reality in some ways, he bought three new Kenworth T680s in 2022, working with a contact from whom he'd previously purchased trucks at Ryder, now at Palmer Trucks/Kenworth of Louisville.
Wilson's purchased several from Ryder through the years, including a couple of 2004 Cat-powered Freightliners he's running to this day. Those are "good trucks," he said.
He's got a 1997 Kenworth W9 with a 13-speed, three Peterbilt 379s he bought from the TMC fleet, working through small issues and overhauls on two of the engines. "Now they're legit," good-running units, Wilson said.
One among the company's tractors, parked at headquarters.
Trailers are all 53-foot air ride dry vans, many purchased from Ryder, he noted. "I used to buy two trailers a year brand-new," he said, before prices jumped during the pandemic. "I was spending $26,000 apiece, then the last one I bought new was $40,000."
The National Association of Small Trucking Companies is sponsoring this year's Small Fleet Championship program. Finalists receive a year's worth of membership in the association, with access to a myriad of benefits from NASTC's well-known fuel program to drug and alcohol testing services and much more. All will be recognized at the association's annual conference, where the winner will be announced in November in Nashville, Tennessee. Find more about the association via their website.
Said Erin Newcomb about drivers Wilson employs and owners leased there: "They're reliable, and they care. ... Some of them have worked for them their whole career."
Wilson's approach to compensation is an 80/20 percentage split for leased owners, 30% for company drivers, though for the latter on shorter out-loaded/back-empty runs Wilson often takes a flat-rate approach. Schedules are such for many that they're home frequently -- for instance, Wilson noted one among his senior drivers departs loaded for Toledo, Kentucky, out from the Louisville area like clockwork Monday, Wednesday and Friday. "He can do one of those in a day," Wilson said.
Clean-inspection bonuses are part of the overall package, and health and life insurance both are available for employees, Wilson noted.
Steven Wilson II is increasingly involved in the family business, today helping manage operations from the back office at age 22. "Since we bought [the new] building," said his father, "he's in the office, and he's taken more of a role," helping the elder Wilson set the business up such that, "if anything happens to me ... it should operate on its own. That's what I want to get to." His son's "learning," he added. "I'm proud of him."
"C.W. Express has the best drivers!" said Lisa Moore, logistics manager with shipper BJK Flexible Packaging, a C.W. Express customer Wilson hauls for often in emergency, need-it-now situations, he said.
"Steve is great to work with and we also have a great relationship with all the drivers," Moore added. "We started working with C.W. when we needed a carrier going to the Georgia area. Steve stepped up and did an amazing job getting our freight hauled at a very competitive and fair price. The rest is history."
Moore acknowledged BJK can be difficult to accommodate from time to time, with "some crazy requests that most carriers would not entertain," as she put it, yet "Steve and C.W. Express do their best to accommodate. We can always count on C.W. Express without worry."
Further growth for the company this year is most definitely a possibility. As this story was going to press, Steve Wilson made note of seven more trailers to add to the pool that he was set to examine. Potentially, too, some service trucks that could bolster Wilson's in-house recovery abilities so lauded by his customer Erin Newcomb at Avenger.
Wilson downplays his success in some ways, but it's clear he's built a winning team.
"I think I’m lucky," he said, noting the difficulties he sees all around him among other fleets. "My bank's behind me" when it comes to business credit. "We’re in a good spot. We're rocking and rolling. I don't plan on going anywhere, and I'm going to do it slow and easy.
"And the way I see it, hopefully we'll continue" to grow. "For now, my goal is 35 [trucks]. But we're not rushing anything."
[Related: Jamie Hagen is 'hellbent' on fuel economy, growth with his small fleet]
