PUBLIC SERVICE PROFILE
Ann Marie Kennon annmarie@wilcobr.com photos courtesy Nelson Jarrin
Living the N
AD RME AEM R IC AN
elson Jarrin’s journey to Williamson County began two generations ago in Quito, Ecuador. His grandfather, a surgeon, immigrated to the United States when Nelson’s father (Nelson, Jr.) was a young boy. Dr. Nelson Jarrin (Sr.) was accepted for a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, and the family immediately set about learning English and the American way of life. Nelson, Jr. graduated from St. Ambrose University and made his way to Texas for a career at General Electric. In the 1980s, he and his partners founded a plastics company in Houston. Sadly, he had a fatal heart attack at age 43, leaving six-year-old Nelson (III) and his mother on their own. Nelson recalls, “I had older siblings from my mother’s and father’s first marriages, but they were older and out of the house, so it was just my mom and me. Things were tough in Houston during the oil downturn in the late 1980s, and she worked in a department store to keep us afloat. At six years old, I was forced to grow up quickly and become the man of the house.”
24 WILCO BUSINESS REVIEW | 2022 • ISSUE 1
A NEW CHAPTER
His mother later re-married, and Nelson says his stepfather, Joe, raised him as one of his own. As regional manager for a large trucking company, Joe moved the family a few times but took a leap of faith in 1996 and opened his own trucking company in Houston. By the time he was a high school senior, Nelson was working for the company. “I learned from the ground floor; loading trucks, dispatching, and finding loads for our drivers. I took a year and a half off from college and spent every summer learning the business; hands-on experience was teaching me what the books could not,” he says. “The company grew to 19 employees plus nearly 30 drivers. We had 29 trucks and 36 trailers at a 10-acre yard in North Houston. We were generating about $15 million annually, and I supervised operations for our offices.” The pride in his voice is conspicuous when he talks about the company’s specialty—overdimensional and overweight—big, complex shipments with escorts. “We were the trucks that took up two lanes of the highway, shipping for energy companies and the military, through the U.S., Mexico, and Canada; we were wide, tall, and heavy.” As he and the company grew, Nelson learned everything about the business. As he continued to assimilate customer service, revenue and payroll, workers’ comp, and all the things that go with assuming risk and building a small business in America, he realized he did not want to take over. He chose instead to attend law school at Notre Dame and return to Texas with a wife and a desire to serve.
