ARKANSAS VISIONARY JUDY MCREYNOLDS

By Dwain Hebda

Arkansas Business Hall of Fame Class of 2023

By Dwain Hebda

In the world of logistics and transport, ArcBest’s Judy McReynolds is a unicorn in more ways than one. Not only is the native Oklahoman one of the few women to serve as chairman, president and CEO in the male-dominated trucking industry, she moved into the role lacking the miles logged and freight hauled by many industry executives who started behind the wheel.

None of which phases McReynolds much, nor has it prevented her from achieving things that are the envy of any CEO. Under her leadership over the past 12 years, the Fort Smith-based company has diversified offerings, boosted revenue and is well-positioned to meet any challenges that lie ahead, a direct reflection of its fearless leader.

“There’s a story I like to refer to, and it’s so true,” she said. “In my years growing up, from when I was a child into my teenage years, I spent a lot of time with my family down at my grandparents’ in western Oklahoma.

“My grandfather was one of 10 and he only had one sister, so I grew up around a lot of men. I think that’s why I was always very comfortable working around men in our industry. I never really focused on how being a woman was that unusual.”

McReynolds, who joined ArcBest in 1997 from the accounting industry, has weathered plenty of situations that would have sent less-resolute leaders scurrying for higher ground. She joined the company right after a major acquisition ballooned ArcBest’s size and scope, allowing the carrier to keep up in a marketplace crowded with competitors.

A little more than a decade later, as McReynolds was promoted to president and CEO, market conditions once again saw several carriers fighting for their survival, ArcBest among them.

“In 2009, the year before I first took my role as CEO of the company, we lost over $100 million dollars because of the financial crisis, the Great Recession that followed and because of a price war that occurred in our industry,” she said. “Right out of the chute, I had to deal with cost control issues, I had to deal with cash flow issues and getting our company to a place where we could improve.”

McReynolds’ multipronged strategy also included looking for new ways for the company to grow revenue.

“The less-than-truckload business during that time was very, very challenging,” she said. “What we stood on was great customer relationships, and in those customer relationships, we found that customers we had been doing business with for decades were spending money elsewhere on services we didn’t provide. Once we had that information, we went about positioning the company so that we could provide a more holistic set of solutions.

“We bought Panther Premium Logistics in 2012, and we did three other truckload brokerage acquisitions that were smaller from 2015 on. Then in November of 2021, we bought MoLo, a Chicago-based truckload broker that was a sizeable acquisition, and that made us a top 15 truckload broker.”

Also expanding the range of the company’s services has been the refinement of logistical tools and services.

“Our mission is to connect and positively impact the world through solving logistics challenges, and we do that for shippers, specifically our customers,” she said. “We stay focused, but we also try to stay ahead, whether it’s through technological advances that we could be more efficient with or as an innovation in our business. We try to stay very open and externally aware.

“Our challenges have certainly been there, whether we had an upswing in business or a downturn. Meeting those challenges starts with having great people, investing in them and communicating with them in a way that’s honest and motivating. That’s where the culture side of our company really shows up.”

Growing up in Norman, Oklahoma, McReynolds displayed an early aptitude in math, which led her to the chemical engineering program at the hometown University of Oklahoma.

“I worked for a law firm when I was in college and tried to navigate around my schedule and the labs that you had for chemical engineering and all that,” she said. “I finally said I can’t do all of this like I want to. I had a little bit of experience at the law firm with accounting and liked it, so I ended up changing and going that direction.”

With her undergraduate degree in hand, McReynolds hired on with Arthur Anderson in Oklahoma City, where her clients ran heavily in the oil and gas field and gave her a first taste of serving clients in a volatile industry.

Three years later, she took a position with Deloitte in Florida, and after a couple of years, she and her husband, Lance, an Arkansas native, wanted to get closer to home. In 1990, she landed a role with Ernst & Young in Little Rock working directly with transportation logistics companies, including ArcBest.

“I was on the tax side of things, and I just steadily built a relationship with the people here,” she said. “One of the partners I worked with at EY left and came to work for ArcBest, and he encouraged me to come to work here.

“At the time, I knew what a challenge it would be, because of knowing the company. My husband raised his hand and said, ‘I’ll be a stay-at-home dad if you want to take on that role.’”

McReynolds had the accounting chops and knew better than most candidates the company’s financials, allowing her to get off to a running start. Even her limited trucking experience did little to impede her momentum, as she was constantly seeking out ways to learn and grow.

“One of the things our company does when you come in as a new person, no matter the role, is you go out and you see the service centers or distribution centers in the field,” she said. “I remember in the early years going to Little Rock to our distribution center there and learning more about the business.

“I also always made it a focus of mine to make sure that I was available for various business meetings, even if it meant that I was going to work late in the evening, rather than just staying focused only on my accounting responsibilities. In that way, I learned our business, and I really grew to love it.”

McReynolds credits the previous challenges for battlereadying the company for the pandemic, from the C-suite to the driver’s seat.

“Because of the experiences in my early years as CEO having to work through similar and difficult challenges, it really helped me to deal with the pandemic,” she said. “When we got word that things were going to be shutting down, we started interacting with customers and understanding that they were also going to be shutting down. We had customers saying they may not be able to pay us as quickly as they typically did, so we knew immediately we were going to have to have some drastic changes.

“I will say, I’ve never been so thankful for our drivers. Our drivers were patriotic in their approach and were just there. In plenty of other industries and plenty of other places, you didn’t have people who were that willing to show up for work.”

It didn’t take long for McReynolds and her team to see the cumulative benefit of their efforts on the balance sheet. The company saw the highest quarterly revenue and operating income in its history in Q3 2021, only to top those figures in each of the first three quarters of 2022. As the company enters its 100th year, and she enters the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame, the future has never looked brighter.

“I remember growing up, my parents always said I can do anything that I set my mind to,” she said. “And it really is true; if you just take each role that you have, do the best you can, build trust with your coworkers and your team and stay open to change, there’s no limit to what you can do.”