It’s a Family Thing

By Alix Miller “You’ll never meet a more devoted man to his family, faith and business than Philip Fulmer.” A sentiment shared by more than just his Director of Safety and Risk Management, Ray Lloyd. Philip Fulmer is a member of a group that I fondly refer to as The Godfathers. Not in a murder-y way…trucking legends who are 2nd-3rd-4th generation in the family business. Tough as nails, business savvy and demanding. But if you need help, they’d be there in a heartbeat—day or night. Because that’s what you do for family. And make no mistake— trucking IS a family. Which explains (at least partially) who Philip Fulmer, President of Carroll Fulmer Logistics Corporation and outgoing FTA Board Chair, is. By all accounts, he’s demanding. You earn what you work for and pay your dues. Learning never stops or you’ll get left behind. But it takes approximately 10 seconds or hearing him laugh (whichever comes first) to quickly realize that’s just one side of Philip. The pure happiness and warmth emanating from him while talking to his grandchildren—interacting with the employees at the office. A fierce love.

But to really understand Philip Fulmer, you have to go back to the beginning.

In 1954, Philip’s father Carroll was working on HIS father’s chicken farm and decided to go into trucking. He bought his first truck (the very same 1949 International on the magazine cover) and started driving to South Georgia, hauling cantaloupes for the Augusta market. “He bought them for two cents and tried to sell them for three cents to make some money.” After about eight years, Carroll bought a Mack Truck and started hauling carrots and onions to New York. Everything changed on one trip, when a man made him an offer he couldn’t refuse (sorry, I couldn’t resist the reference). “If you move to New York, I’ll put you in business, give you the money to start. But there’s one catch: I own almost this whole town. You’ll need to bring enough relatives to run all the businesses for me.” So that’s what Carroll did. He packed up the whole family, rounded up several uncles and friends and started Carroll Fulmer Logistics Corporation. “We ran every business, except the restaurant, because none of us know anything about food,” Philip says, chuckling. By 1967, when Philip was nine, the time came to move back to Florida and they opened their office on South Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando with only three trucks. They immediately started hiring owner-operators, started the brokerage and bought company trucks. Today, 50 years later, they have 500 company trucks, 125 owner-operators and a booming logistics business. “When we talk to our bankers, we call ourselves the three-legged stool. If, at any given time, one part of the business starts to struggle, or we’re dealing with a driver shortage, we just ramp up another part of the business. We don’t want to get caught with 100 trucks sitting on the yard.” The model has proven so successful that other major trucking companies started using the same business model 25 year later. Philip graduated from high school six months early and went to a trade school to become an architect. He started working parttime after school for his father, cleaning the office, running basic errands. During the summer of 1977, Carroll had a proposition: did Philip want to go to Virginia to help out with the produce business? He then did the same in Palmetto and Dover, Delaware. He began to follow the crops.

He also got bitten by the trucking bug and hasn’t looked back since.

Philip ultimately returned to Florida and started running the

office. But since he and his wife were always okay with traveling, summers were spent following the crops. He married his wife Ann in 1978 and immediately went to Yakima, WA, their second summer spent in Fresno, CA; the next four in Charleston, SC; 7-8 years in Grand Rapids, MI. For the first 15-20 years of marriage, the family was away every summer. Now married almost 44 years, they haven’t spent summers away in 20. He became President of Carroll Fulmer Logistics Corporation about five years ago. Philip has followed in his father’s footsteps in more ways than just the trucking business. Carroll, who recently turned 87, is deeply religious: “He stressed you need to work hard for everything and put all your belief in faith. Be involved in the church and help with whatever needs to be done, and it will come back to you tenfold.” Philip was given no special treatment at the office. If he wanted it, he had to work for it: “If you don’t want to work for it, you don’t have to work here.” Philip was making an hourly wage, but Carroll gave him a salary of $125 a week after getting married. Philip attributes who he is—both professionally and personally—to his parents, and he has raised his sons, Josh and Kyle, the same way. And his parenting style seems to be working: Josh and Kyle recently, with Philip’s blessing, purchased Sunstate Carriers. Admittedly though, he drives his entire family crazy with copies of produce and transportation journals laying around everywhere. “My father was always reading. He stressed how important it was to always keep up with the business and what’s happening. You can never have too much knowledge. The more you read about the industry, read about what your competitors are doing, the better you can stay aligned with everybody.” But back to his fierce love. His family is clearly Philip’s world. That also extends to his work family. He is tough, sure, but both Carroll and Philip have always promoted a healthy work environment. “If you treat someone like family, they’ll enjoy where they work.” Most employees who work at Carroll Fulmer retire at Carroll Fulmer. Most of the office staff has been there for 15-20 years. They celebrate birthdays every month, work anniversaries, encourage participation in kids’ baseball teams, attend sporting events together. “My father was a very stern guy, but at the same time, everybody knew he had a big heart.” Philip continued that tradition— meeting with every new driver and giving them his cell phone number, telling them they can call him whenever they need to talk. “Don’t have locked doors where people can’t come in.” Because as the company tagline reads, We Are Family.

Stay Driven.

Omnitracs delivers software-as-a-servicebased solutions to help over 14,000 customers — spanning from carriers to owner/operators, to wholesale distributors and local service companies — manage nearly 1,100,000 assets in more than 70 countries. Today, as a powerhouse of innovative, intuitive technologies, Omnitracs transforms the transportation industry through technology and insight, featuring best-in-class solutions for compliance, safety and security, productivity, telematics and tracking, transportation management (TMS), planning and delivery, data and analytics, and professional services.