Paschall Truck Lines CEO Randall Waller Steps Down After 44 Years
Paschall Truck Lines has a new top executive for the first time in more than four decades.
David Gibbs became president and CEO on Sept. 25, replacing Randall Waller, who announced his retirement Sept. 14.
Waller purchased the Murray, Ky.-based trucking company in 1973 and has been president and CEO ever since. He will continue to serve as chairman, and the company will continue to be owned by its employees, who acquired the stock held by Waller in 2013 through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan.
Gibbs
At the time, Waller said he wanted a plan to transfer ownership and management of the business in a way that would keep the company from losing its local roots.
“I’ve worked too long and too hard to build this business and its communities, and [seeing the business] move away was not an acceptable option,” Waller said. “Employee ownership of PTL has been a dream of mine for a long time and makes the fulfillment of my promise to keep PTL in the communities in which we now work even more possible.”
Gibbs comes to Paschall Truck Lines from McLeod Express in Decatur, Ill., where he was president since 2013. He also worked in top management positions at Gordon Trucking and Schneider, company officials said.
Paschall Truck Lines ranks No. 98 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of largest for-hire carriers in North America with revenue of $237.3 million in 2016. The company has 1,831 employees and operates a fleet of 950 company-owned tractors, 353 owner-operator tractors and 3,101 trailers, providing dry van truckload freight hauling and freight brokerage services throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Besides Paschall Truck Lines’ headquarters in Murray, Ky., the company has truck terminals in Franklin, Tenn.; West Memphis, Ark.; Indianapolis; and El Paso, Brownsville and Laredo in Texas.
The company was started in 1937 by L.W. Paschall and his wife, who hauled farm products and delivered milk and fertilizer before securing rights to haul general merchandise to the nearby cities of Louisville, Ky.; St. Louis and Memphis, Tenn.
By 1972, the company had grown to 35 employees and more than 100 pieces of equipment when Paschall began to think of retirement and arranged to sell the business to an eager young entrepreneur from Nashville by the name of Randall Waller, who made the company his own for the past 44 years.
