J.B.?s Life is His Lasting Legacy (Publisher?s Note)

I wouldn’t pretend to know J.B. Hunt anywhere near as well as many of those who filled The Church at Pinnacle Hills on Dec. 11 for his funeral service.
From captains of industry to commoners, we were all there. The truth is, we all knew Mr. J.B. Anyone who’s been in his general proximity for the last couple of decades couldn’t help but know him.
The only thing he made faster than money was a friend.
The trucking and real estate tycoon died on Dec. 7 after suffering a critical head injury from a fall he took on a patch of ice. Hunt, 79, got a fitting tribute at the cathedral that sits at the epicenter of Rogers’ 400-acre Pinnacle Hills complex — the office and retail mecca that he and his Pinnacle Group partners have turned into the crown jewel of local commerce.
Hunt liked to keep faith in the middle of things.
Sadly, for a visionary who also “liked to be first,” his was the first memorial service at the newly opened church.
Northwest Arkansas business and community leaders assembled like heads of state mourning a fallen king. (Mr. J.B., by the way, would have hated that analogy and swiftly turned it into a joke a la Henny Youngman.)
The first time I met J.B. and Johnelle Hunt was in 1993 on the foggy morning their truckload carrier, J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., hit the $1 billion revenue mark.
I wrote for a daily newspaper out of Fayetteville then, and got the assignment because senior reporters groused that Lowell was too far to go to cover a pre-dawn event.
I wanted to meet the man in the Stetson hat and wound up being the only media type there for hours.
The Hunts happened to climb out of their pickup truck about the same time I was walking by. Without hesitation, Mr. J.B. jumped up on the sidewalk and jutted out his hand.
For the next hour, the Hunts handed out coffee, shook hands and thanked employees for the company’s success.
A tote board overhead sped through the upper 900 millions toward the milestone.
I coaxed Johnelle into holding up one finger for a picture. She didn’t want people to think she was bragging, but finally grinned and obliged. Our artists put a dollar sign and nine zeros around her finger, forming the headline: “$1,000,000,000.”
Shortly thereafter Mr. J.B. sat down for a quick one-on-one interview. I will never forget how personable and patient he was with me.
He single-handedly changed my impression of big businessmen.
One question I asked was, “Mr. Hunt, how do you make a billion dollars?” He said, “Get up a lot of early mornings son. Work hard, read your Bible, and everything will take care of itself.”
I’ve probably had occasion to interact personally with Mr. J.B. another three dozen or so times in the nine years I’ve been at the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal.
Whether it was sitting down for another interview, saying hello in the lunch crowd at Neal’s Café or watching him diagram business ideas on a napkin at various meetings and parties.
Never once was he anything but genuine, inviting and sincere.
My favorite memory was his testimony earlier this year at The Summit Lunch in Rogers.
He also changed the way I manage my own day.
Mr. J.B. carried a note card in his shirt pocket that listed details about his various business ventures.
He showed it to me during an interview, and I decided a little daily checklist would probably make me more efficient, too. I still carry one every day.
His note card expanded to a little leather pocket planner in recent years, having to keep track of about 30 companies.
In the last week I couldn’t help but think about how Mr. J.B. and the rest of The Big Three — Don Tyson and the late Sam Walton — all share or shared the ability to relate to virtually anyone.
It’s a lost art among CEOs, quite frankly, and probably why those three accomplished more than most.
They were risk takers, and they embraced new ideas and people in general. All of us in business could learn a lot from that attitude.
And from getting up a lot of early mornings.
Reflecting on the Loss of J.B. Hunt Sr.
When word spread that Johnnie Bryan Hunt Sr. had been injured in an accident at his home, we knew to be concerned. He was 79, after all. But his death still shocked the system. J.B. Hunt somehow seemed indestructible.
Take a look at any photograph of Hunt and his wife/partner/soulmate, Johnelle.
It was not time for that man to go, and the loss his friends and family are experiencing must be palpable.
Hunt’s funeral at the Church at Pinnacle Hills in Rogers commemorated the life of a man who was, as corny as it sounds, a true living legend.
His name will continue to be synonymous with the business of efficiently moving commodities and merchandise across America’s roads, and he built a fabulous fortune for his family and for the investors who believed in him back in 1961.
He also provided good jobs for thousands of Arkansans and tens of thousands of Americans over the past 45 years.
Although the company was named for J.B. Hunt, he never seemed to believe that he built the country’s largest publicly traded trucking company by himself.
In everything, even his induction into the University of Arkansas’ Business Hall of Fame, he shared the credit with Johnelle.
He long ago turned over the day-to-day operation of J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. to Kirk Thompson, who has taken the company to new levels.
And he believed in paying it forward: J.B. Hunt’s willingness to invest in other start-up companies was sometimes ridiculed, but that’s the trait we admired most.