A Lifelong Passion for Trucking By Holly Brooks
You might say FTA Board Chair Scott Perry was destined to work in the transportation industry. Scott, who serves as President of Moving & Logistics at Suddath, comes from a family of transportation professionals. His paternal greatgrandfather had his own trucking company as an extension of his chicken farming business – a small operation. His maternal grandfather was a truck driver for Bowman Transportation most of his career until he could no longer drive due to vision loss. That’s when he left the road and became a dock supervisor in their local terminal. “His terminal was actually about a block away from my elementary school, 4 | WINTER 2021
FLORIDA TRUCK NEWS
and I have fond memories of going to Bowman as a young child and ‘working’ on the dock and in the truck shop,” Scott recalls. He also has many uncles who have been in and out of the industry for the past 50 years.
He credits these familial ties with igniting his passion for transportation and logistics. “When I see our drivers, warehouse workers and support staff, I can relate that directly back to grandparents, aunts and uncles who played important roles in my formative years.” Scott grew up in Gadsden, a rural town in Northeast Alabama – “one of those towns with just two traffic lights” – and began his career in his teen years as a lumper at the Goodyear
Tire distribution center, working with one of his uncles who drove a truck full-time. He started networking with the local trucking companies while helping their drivers unload tires at all of the local warehouses, doing this until starting college at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Ala. During his junior year, Ryder offered Scott a job as a warehouse employee at the same Goodyear Tire distribution center where he worked in his teen years, giving him an opportunity to participate in their management development program. From there, he became an operations leader, eventually progressing into a corporate leadership role. Now, 35
