To Lead is to Serve Currlin takes the helm as Chairman of the Board

By Eric J. Francis Contributing Writer

“I grew up here, studied here, got married here, have friends here – I consider the Miami area home. I like the warm weather, the diversity in the area.”

—Carlos Currlin, manager director, Rechtien International

Trucks

As he begins his term as chairman of the board of Florida Trucking Association, Carlos Currlin knows he’s following in some well-respected footprints.

Currlin is managing director of Rechtien International Trucks, the South Florida dealership founded 40 years ago by Dick Rechtien, who also served as FTA chairman.

“Rechtien International was always a member of FTA. Dick Rechtien had been involved with the board and had been chair, as well,” said Currlin. “I always wanted to serve and be a part of the industry as well – I believe to lead is to serve, not just your employees and your customers but your industry.”

Currlin walked that walk, joining the board and serving as treasurer and secretary, before stepping into the role as board chair.

Currlin’s mission

Currlin is quick to lay out what he sees as the Association’s mission: Advocate, communicate, and educate.

“We advocate and work on trying to advance public policy in the interest of the trucking industry,” he said.

And he knows what one of his top priorities will be, not just at the state level but also for the industry at the federal level.

“Right now, the key focus is working on lawsuit abuse reform, working at the state level and with industry stakeholders,” Currlin said. “That’s a major impact on trucking and distributors and the industry in general. Florida is considered one of the worst legal climates in the country because of the amount of frivolous lawsuits and excessive verdicts. It’s significantly impacting the cost of insurance, and all citizens and consumers are paying for that.”

He also wants to build on the membership growth efforts of the past and see how FTA can improve engagement among its members, too. It’s a key ingredient in the association’s advocacy efforts, said Currlin: “The more people you get involved, the louder your voice, the more impact you have with the state.”

“More companies need to understand what a great team and resource the FTA staff members are in Tallahassee, available to help any carrier with a variety of everyday challenges, from regulatory issues to licensing to plates and more. There are also opportunities to serve on committees, as well as the networking and education available at conferences.

“It’s all about getting involved,” he said. “We have a 2.0 Leadership committee as well, where if you have young leaders in your company who have high potential, you get them exposure to the entire industry.”

And, of course, you can’t be an executive in the trucking industry today without having part of your brain focused continuously on perennial issue of employee recruitment and retention. It’s not surprising that, as a truck dealer, Currlin hears this from his customers regularly.

“The other priority we have right now is a trucking industry recruitment initiative and public safety campaign, with a grant allocated by the Florida legislature this year,” said Currlin. “We’re working to highlight these high-paying, great jobs and opportunities that exist in transportation – whether it’s drivers, technicians, logistics – there are a lot of highly rewarding jobs and we’re trying to raise awareness.”

Backing from the state is going to be critical to such endeavors and Currlin said Gov. Ron DeSantis has been supporting recruitment and training efforts, including securing dedicated funds to help with expansion at private CDL training schools. There’s also a digital and social media marketing campaign highlighting opportunities in the industry.

“There’s a whole plan to expand the number of CDL schools going on right now,” he said.

“You’ve got to attract people when they’re young into the industry, because once they’ve selected a certain job, they go down a different career path. We need to be attracting 18- to 21-year-olds, and military veterans with a lot of experience who might have CDLs or mechanical experience already.”

Certainly not least on his to-do list is continuing to educate the public on the central role of trucking in the economy.

“More than 80 percent of goods are transported by a truck,” noted Currlin.

“The general public may not realize that. I think that was actually highlighted – and the trucking industry really shone – during the COVID pandemic and the supply chain crisis. The industry in general rose to the occasion, continuing to deliver goods around the country and the economy growing.”

It was much the same after Hurricane Ian hit the Fort Myers area in October.

“Trucking companies were already positioned beforehand with trailers and trucks that were available to transport supplies and materials to start helping people and helping the rebuilding efforts” he said.

FTA President and CEO Alix Miller said the association is excited to have Currlin stepping into the role of chairman of the board.

“He has great energy,” she said, “and it’s important to have representation from the Miami area, South Florida being a region where the association wants to grow membership.”

Leadership style

What is Currlin’s leadership style apt to be during his tenure? One person who’s got insight on that question is Millie Mejia, who has worked with Currlin for 25 years.

In fact, she can answer that question with just four words: “He leads by example.”

“He is a class act,” said Mejia, who is director of Business Operations and Administration at Rechtien. The standard that he sets for himself in business dealings emanates throughout the office.

“If you’re going to write an email really quickly, and you’re having one those days and you’re going to write back something, you say, ‘Would Carlos write this email?’” she said. “You always have him in the back of your mind. He’s very ethical, very respected in the business world, a true gentleman.”

The two have a very close relationship in leading Rechtien, despite what Mejia describes as fairly disparate personalities.

“I’m a quick person, very, ‘Let’s just do it!’ He’s and a focus on people.” As it happens, the number of people he’s focusing on doubled back in the spring, when Rechtien completed its acquisition of Carolina International Trucks. With its six locations in South Carolina that brings the total number of dealerships to 11 and the employee count to 450.

But even though the company is now twice the size it was last year, Currlin doesn’t feel like a lot is really going to change: They’ll still focus on being a trusted partner for their customers and a great place to work for their employees.

“Every year we participate in the Great Place to Work Institute’s employee satisfaction and trust index survey,” he said. “All employees are surveyed on different competencies to measure culture in the company, and you’re scored in different areas. We publish those results so that our employees can see where we’re doing well and where we can keep improving. We have a great group of employees, a great team, highly dedicated, working every day really hard to serve our customers.”

And what is the lesson he takes from those survey results? The same lesson he took to heart when he got into the trucking business. “It is a journey about building relationships and trust while adding value by serving others.” FTN more analytical, he kind of waits first,” said Mejia. But while he takes his time when considering business decisions, that doesn’t mean he’s cooling his heels, she added. He has a penchant for not standing still.

That suits his reputation as a dedicated boss and a workaholic, but Mejia said it’s important for people to know his other side – that of an equally dedicated family man. When he was working as managing director of Navistar Mexico in Mexico City, she said, Currlin made a point to go home every weekend to be with his family in Chicago.

“His son was real young, his daughter had recently been born,” she said. “I’ll never forget knowing that he’d be going home on Friday and travel back to see his family. He did this for like three years.”

One of the biggest strengths Currlin will bring to his FTA term, said Mejia, is his penchant for in-depth research.

“He is so in tune with everything going on in the industry,” she said. “He’s always informed. He’s going to read a lot, research a lot, and he’s going to understand the issues and the market. He’s going to be phenomenal because he doesn’t go in blind.”

Establishing roots

Currlin and his wife Gloria have been married for 20 years and have a son, Alexander, and daughter, Giselle. They live in city of Weston near Ft. Lauderdale. It’s familiar territory, since from his mid-teens on his family lived in the Miami area. Born in California “where Silicon Valley is now but before it existed,” his parents – Francis and Dolores Currlin – moved the family to El Salvador when he was 10 and to Miami when he was 16.

“I grew up here, studied here, got married here, have friends here – I consider the Miami area home,” said Currlin. “I like the warm weather, the diversity in the area.”

A graduate of the University of Miami, where he studied Finance, Currlin started out as a commodities broker specializing in options on futures contracts. But after a couple of years, he decided it wasn’t for him.

“I wanted to focus on selling tangible products that added value to operations, and on working with people,” he said.

So, he joined Komatsu, a Japanese manufacturer of construction and mining machinery, starting in sales and eventually managing equipment sales in Latin America. And after seven years with Komatsu, he joined Navistar, where he spent his first 18 years in the trucking industry.

Over that time the job would take Currlin and his family far and wide, including his three years in Mexico City. They also spent seven years in the Chicago area, while he worked at the Navistar headquarters. Life in the Chicago suburbs was a great experience, he said.

“Our daughter was born there,” he pointed out. “We consider that our second home and go back at least twice a year. My kids actually miss it so much – they prefer the changing seasons and, if you ask them, they’d like to live there again.”

Eventually, though he enjoyed international sales, he felt it was time to establish roots and have an impact in the community where he lived.. His experiences working with dealers around the country had given him an inkling that he’d like to try that side of the business.

Currlin joined Rechtien in 2014 when the company was acquired by a privately held diversified conglomerate, Bepensa. What was the big change like, going from the manufacturing to the dealership side of things?

“Most of my career was working with global markets,” he said. “I was vice president of global sales and distribution, so we handled sales of trucks with dealers outside of North America – in Latin America, Asia Pacific, Africa, the Middle East. I worked with dealers and competed with other manufacturers from around world. It was a great experience.

“But always felt like wanted to be able to establish roots in my community,” he added.

“To work in the community and feel like I had more of an immediate impact in what I was doing. worked with dealers around the world and I always liked the pace in a dealership, and most especially the relationships. The trucking industry is all about relationships with your customers and becoming a trusted partner by adding value and helping them succeed. Being part of the community as well. I wanted to have that.”

That includes building on the strong company culture at Rechtien, what he calls a “high-performance culture with strong values

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