Shaw Did it All Before Retiring From Trucking

Willis Shaw said he thought he’d have to change his name to succeed in the poultry business.

When he decided to start hauling chickens in 1938, Shaw said only three people were shipping poultry out of Northwest Arkansas: Charlie Garrett, C.L. “Charlie” George (father of George’s Inc. Chairman Gene George) and Charlie Dodd.

“When I told people I was going to start hauling chickens they said, ‘You’ll never make it ’cause your name ain’t Charlie,” Shaw said.

Shaw, 85, made his own name in the trucking business.

Shaw started his walkabouts during the Great Depression when he drove job seekers to California for hamburgers and a small monetary fee.

During his first decade as a poultry hauler, Shaw operated as Willis Shaw Produce and shipped an estimated 37 million chickens to markets in Illinois, Georgia, Texas and California. The early chicken trucks needed two drivers and 10 to 15 bags of feed to haul 3,000 broilers on what was then a nearly 700-mile trip to Chicago.

“It was really hard to get financing,” Shaw said. “I would borrow the money on a trip-by-trip basis, usually on a Friday from Dr. Cooper in Elm Springs, and then I’d pay him a $20 finance charge when I got back.”

With the advent of refrigerated trailers in 1948, Shaw worked to make them lighter and therefore more profitable. He was eventually the first to use blown insulation in “reefer” rigs.

In the late 1940s, interstate shipping authority was tightly regulated by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and Shaw painstakingly acquired shipping authority to the 48 contiguous states. After incorporating in 1958 as Willis Shaw Frozen Express Inc., the firm appealed a case to the U.S. Supreme Court that gave it “grandfather authority” for shipping frozen fruits, berries and vegetables. More than 1,300 other carriers followed the precedent.

In the late 1940s, the Swanson Foods plant in Fayetteville started making TV dinners, and pretty soon any American digging into the tin-foiled phenomenons was eating a product hauled by WSFE. Then radial tires came along, and WSFE was one of the first to convert. That caused the firm develop ledge-welded wheels that would hold up under steel-belted tires.

“I guess we got as big as the second- largest refrigerated line in America,” Shaw said. “Some of the other carriers hauled dry freight, too, but of the reefers we were probably the most profitable. We could haul more weight and our fuel costs would be 10 percent less.”

WSFE was bought out by Del Monte Corp. in 1970, becoming part of its 11-carrier subsidiary Distribution Systems Inc. that Shaw chaired. Sons Dennis and Bob Shaw helped run WSFE with Frank Maestri, a longtime employee who Shaw said helped shape the company along with veterans like Ellis Bogan.

When Del Monte was bought out by R.J. Reynolds Inc. in 1983, selloffs prompted the Shaw family to make a leveraged repurchase of their company. The Shaws finally resold to Comcar Industries Inc. a decade later.

“My only regret is that I didn’t get to go to college to become an engineer,” Willis Shaw said.

Willis Shaw spent more than 30 years on several local boards and national associations. He served under five presidential administrations as a member of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s national defense executive reserve, a pool of 300 national business executives selected to serve in key civil posts in the event of an emergency.

Now Shaw, who with his wife, Helen Lorene, celebrated his 66th wedding anniversary on June 16, said he enjoys trading bonds and managing his other investments.