Newly Installed ATA Chairman Dan England Is Third Generation of Utah Trucking Dynasty
By Eric Miller, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the Oct. 24 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
SALT LAKE CITY — Maybe it was simply a case of a father’s love of trucking rubbing off on his young son as he grew up in a tiny town about an hour’s drive north of the sprawling C.R. England headquarters here.
Or maybe there was something in the Plain City, Utah, water supply that mysteriously spawned a handful of trucking family dynasties.
Growing up with the likes of the Moyeses, the Knights and the Englands, who would have doubted that Dan England, installed last week as the 67th chairman of American Trucking Associations, would eventually become anything but a trucker?
England’s Plain City childhood buddy, Jerry Moyes, founder and chairman of Swift Transportation, which ranks No. 7 on the Transport Topics Top 100 For-Hire Carriers list, once explained the mystery this way: “We were probably conceived in the sleeper of a truck. We grew up with trucking in our blood. It’s what we are. It’s who we are.”
Moyes joked in a recent interview that the strange substance in the Plain City water supply must have been diesel fuel.
Whatever it was, trucking had been tugging at Dan England’s heartstrings even before he formally joined C.R. England as the family trucking firm’s legal counsel in 1977.
As a kid, England rode in company trucks with his dad and granddad and, at the age of 24, England and his wife now of 40 years, Jan, spent a summer crisscrossing the country as a company truck-driving team.
“We went coast to coast,” England recalled. “I’d generally have her drive at night because she was always on edge. She could stay awake better than I could. It was a great experience, one we’ll never forget.”
“In those days they didn’t have showers for women at the truck stops, so I’d go in and block the door so she could get in a shower,” England said.
For roughly three years before joining the company, England was a transportation attorney, and he spent a good deal of time on C.R. England legal projects.
“There came a time I was billing the company so much for legal services I thought I might as well work there,” England said.
After taking over as legal counsel, the soft-spoken but intense England quickly rose to CEO and has guided the refrigerated truckload carrier from a tiny 200-truck venture to become a $1 billion industry leader with 4,200 trucks traveling on highways in the United States and Mexico.
C.R. England’s headquarters in Salt Lake City, which houses one of the company’s four trucking schools, is like a bustling small town. It has a full-service bank branch, cafeteria, classrooms, car and truck leasing agency, medical clinic, fitness center, convenience store, drivers’ lounges, lodging for more than 150 drivers and a production studio. Since 2005, C.R. England has grown from No. 42 on the TT for-hire list to No. 21 in 2011, and it is now the largest refrigerated carrier in the United States by revenue.
Now, England, who has turned over more of the day-to-day operations of the company to his brothers but stayed on as the company’s chairman, will attempt to take his button-down, straightforward leadership style to the nation’s capital to defend an industry under regulatory siege.
As ATA chairman, England inherits several thorny trucking industry challenges, ranging from passage of a long-term federal highway bill and potentially sweeping changes to hours-of-service regulations to wrestling with implementation of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.
“We kind of have a target on our back in the trucking industry, everything from regulators to trial lawyers and people who make laws,” England said. “All of them seem to have issues with the way we do business.”
England said that in addition to the hours rule and smoothing out the kinks in the CSA program, he also will work to speed up initial safety audits for new industry entrants, mandates for electronic onboard recorders and the establishment of a federal clearinghouse for truck driver alcohol and drug test results.
But lobbying Congress and federal regulatory agencies is not a process he particularly relishes.
“It’s amazing how hard you have to work to get common sense to prevail,” he said.
Although the number of trucking accidents is on the decline, England said, some in high-level government positions still seem to want to make drastic changes.
“From a regulatory standpoint, if they continue to heap more burdens on our industry, ultimately it will flow through to the public,” England said. “Certainly, we all want to save lives. But despite how much you regulate, you’re not going to prevent some accidents from happening.”
As the industry’s No. 1 spokesman, family and associates said that England will bring to the table decades of experience and a quiet, analytical and self-effacing manner.
Trucking is indeed his passion, said his son, Chad, 37, the company’s chief operating officer.
“He won’t rest until he fixes things,” Chad said. “Whether it’s to C.R. England’s benefit or not, he always wants to do the right thing.”
“I think Dan’s going to do an excellent job as chairman,” Moyes said. “He’s got a legal background, which is very important to that job.”
Not only is England trained as an attorney, but he has varied contacts and friends all over the nation, said brother Todd.
“He has a great relationship with a lot of the movers and shakers in the business,” Todd said. “He’s also had a lot of involvement with the government.”
Bill Graves, ATA’s president and CEO, called England the “quintessential trucker.”
“Seeing what he’s done as a third-generation leader in this industry is really an inspiration,” Graves said. “Beyond that, and it sounds clichéd, but Dan is just legitimately a nice guy and a good man. His focus on his family, his church and his business are something that we could all learn from.”
Former ATA Chairman Charles “Shorty” Whittington called England “the best-kept secret in the trucking industry.”
“He’s not showy. He doesn’t lead the band, but he certainly knows the music,” Whittington said. “He’s just very impressive. And he’s not going to come out and tap you on the shoulder and tell you he’s a good guy.”
I like the fact that trucking is such an important industry, so integral to the standard of living that we have and the success of our nation,” England said. “And I really like the fact that as an employer we’ve got 7,000 employees and contractors that are dependent upon C.R. England for their income.”
But England said he feels a great responsibility for the safety of the company’s drivers.
“The No. 1 area I dislike about trucking is the continual worry about accidents, not operating safely and hurting people,” England said. “That’s the biggest thing I struggle with, the thing that keeps me awake at night.”
Dan England, 64, is the second eldest of the six England brothers, three of whom have joined him in the company’s top leadership positions.
His brother Jeff, 70, decided to go his own way in 1979, starting up Pride Transport, a successful reefer motor carrier located a stone’s throw from C.R. England in Salt Lake City — but remains very close with the family.
“In a lot of ways Jeff’s most like our dad,” England said. “I love trucking, but he loves trucks. His trucks are always the fanciest. He rebuilds these old trucks and makes classics out of them. He drives a lot, like our dad used to.”
England said he enjoys an occasional trip in the truck cab, but adds, “There are a lot of other things I’d rather do than drive a truck.”
Dean, 56, is England’s president; Todd, 50, is the company’s executive vice president for maintenance; and Corey, 47, is executive vice president for operations support.
Another brother, Rod, also worked for the company but died in 1995 of complications from diabetes — despite Dan’s donating one of his own kidneys to try to save his brother’s life.
England credits the contributions of his brothers, other family members and employees as integral to the company’s success. But as a lay Mormon bishop and the eldest brother in the company’s management structure, Dan is the rock, the natural family leader on whose shoulders have rested many of the major decisions in the family’s spiritual and business lives.
Still, there is a rare sense of harmony in the business and personal dealings among the four brothers, who, despite their age differences, don’t allow vanities to interfere with company business.
“We grew up in an environment where our dad and uncle worked together their whole careers,” Todd said. “I think we learned from them to some degree how you make a relationship work. We had good examples.”
Some of his industry counterparts marvel at England’s ability to maintain peace among all the family members who play a part in running the business.
The company took a major step toward transitioning its ownership structure back in 2005, when the four brothers and their father, Eugene, bought 100% of the company for an undisclosed sum.
Still, Dan said one of the biggest challenges he’s faced in the last eight years has been “how to narrow the ownership of this company so that the company isn’t placed at risk by infighting.”
“That is a huge, huge issue,” he said. “We’ve seen so many companies fail, especially in the third generation.”
Moyes said he’s been impressed as he watched “Dan really bring the company along.”
“One of the things that I think you’ve got to give Dan a lot of credit for is how he’s done a good job at keeping peace in the family — keeping everybody on the straight and narrow,” Moyes said.
Kevin Knight, chairman and CEO of Knight Transportation, No. 31 on the TT for-hire list, agreed.
“The most impressive thing to me about Dan and all of the Englands is that it is now a fourth-generation family business, and those guys just work so well together,” Knight said. “They’re just so dang good at being a family business. It’s just an amazing story.”
The England story began in 1920 in Plain City about 20 miles northwest of Ogden, Utah, when Dan’s grandfather, Chester — the “C” in C.R. England — bought a Model T Ford pickup and began hauling milk from farms to dairies in northern Utah. Over the next three decades, Chester concentrated on the transportation of food products that were exempted from federal regulation, and he expanded his operation to cover the intermountain states as well as California and Texas.
After World War II, Chester’s sons, Bill and Eugene, Dan’s father, began a gradual expansion that brought the fleet size to nearly 200 tractors by 1980.
Plain City was ground zero not only for the formation of C.R. England but also for Phoenix-based trucking giants Swift Transportation and Knight Transportation — largely because of friendships and family relationships that began in Plain City.
Jerry Moyes’ father, Carl, took his first truck-driving job in the mid-1950s with C.R. England, and Dan’s grandmother was a member of the Knight family before she married Dan’s father and became an England.
A friendship between Swift’s Moyes and Dan dates back to their childhood.
“Because of the relationships, we all learned that business. We all spent time with each other, spent time working for each other, and it just naturally happened,” Kevin Knight said.
“Our parents were good friends and did a lot of things together,” Moyes said. “We went on family trips together to California and boating trips. We always had a good time with the Englands, including Dan.”
Although he’s a deeply religious man, England keeps his faith in his heart and mind, but doesn’t wear it on his sleeve and doesn’t bring it to work, associates said.
“I think I’m pretty transparent,” England said. “My wife has told me over the years, I’m pretty much the same regardless of the setting I’m in.”
He spends up to 25 hours a week in his capacity as a Mormon bishop responsible for the spiritual well-being of a 450-member congregation. England has been known to cut a trucking conference short on Saturday evening to hop a flight home so he doesn’t miss Sunday services.
“It takes a lot of work,” said close friend William Thurman, chief bankruptcy judge for the District of Utah. “I don’t know how he does it.”
Thurman and England have been friends since high school, pledged to the same fraternity at the University of Utah, worked at the same law firm and for the past few decades have seen each other socially and been part of a church study group, Thurman said.
Despite all his work and church activities, his wife Jan said England manages to spend significant time with his extended family — currently numbering more than 50 — and makes them feel they are the most important thing in his life.
“As busy as he is, he did the sweetest thing for me for our 40th anniversary,” Jan said.
England and one of his daughters-in-law found a photo for each of the years the couple has been married and mounted them in a picture frame.
“That sort of sums up how he is,” Jan said. “He’s extremely thoughtful and selfless. And he’s always like that.”
