HDT Emerging Leader: A Hands-on Leadership Approach to Earning Respect – Fleet Management

Although she’s a third-generation trucking family member, Jessica King Price had not planned to join the family trucking business right after college in 2008. But after graduating during the subprime mortgage crisis with an accounting and business degree, the offer from her grandparents was the one she took.

“Because of the turmoil that was going on in trucking at the time, my grandparents were like, ‘If you’re going to come work in the family business, now’s the time,’” she says.

What followed was a challenging, stressful, but rewarding journey, and today she’s the president of Palletized Trucking in Houston, Texas.

Palletized has about 200 drivers and offers intermodal container drayage, open deck and heavy haul services, plus hot shot services, and has a brokerage arm.

“What I generally say is we do from 1 pound to about 170,000 pounds of cargo,” she says. “We’re really good in the heavy haul space. That’s where we pride ourselves.”

To learn the family business from the ground up, King started as a receptionist and moved from there through accounts receivable, accounts payable, safety, and other areas of the company.

“I was in every position you could think of throughout the first couple of years,” she says.

It wasn’t easy. Between the economic turmoil and the challenge of mastering the dynamics of a family business, it was a high-stress environment.

When her father passed away from lung cancer in 2014, he left his ownership in the business to her.

“At that point, I thought, ‘I’ve either got to figure this out or I’ve got to say somehow that I want to exit the business,’” she recalls.

“So I decided to figure it out.”

Figuring it Out

King joined the Texas Trucking Association and the American Trucking Associations.

“I got immersed in everything trucking,” she says, “to make sure I didn’t understand it just from an operational standpoint, but from a higher view. To know what it meant to meet with Congress, what it meant to meet with other business owners who were dealing with the same issues that we were dealing with.

“Really molding myself to be able to sit in a boardroom — but also be able to talk to our drivers every single day.”

King was not only young, but she also was a woman in an industry where women in top executive roles are still fairly rare. That didn’t make things any easier.

When she started participating in board meetings, she says, they were heavily weighted toward older men.

“It was very difficult getting the men at the table to listen to what I had to say.”

Overcoming this was a challenge, she says, because her natural personality is an introvert.

“My grandfather would always say, ‘speak from experience,” she says. So she started focusing on sharing real, relatable experiences.

“I do have something to say. I do have the experience. I’ve been in this long enough to say, ‘This is my experience, and this is how I’ve reacted to it, or this is what I need help with, how can you guys help me?”

Through those conversations, she says, those older board members realized that even though King was 30 years younger and a woman, they did share the same challenges and she did have something relevant to add to the conversation.

“My grandfather would tell me, ‘Just work like hell and earn their respect and you’ll be fine,’” King says. “So that’s what I’ve definitely tried to do.”

Earning Respect

And that advice also holds true for her relationship with her employees.

Palletized Executive VP Chris Sobba praised King’s hands-on approach to leadership in his nomination of her for the award.

“She is not one to lead from behind a desk; rather, she is often found working alongside her employees, whether it’s in the dispatch office, the maintenance yard, or on the road with drivers.

“This boots-on-the-ground approach has earned her the respect and loyalty of her team.”

In fact, when asked about what she’s most proud of having accomplished, King answered, “It’s my team, my people. I think I have formed a really tight group of people that trust me, and I can trust them.”

Some of the company’s drivers started decades ago under her grandparents’ leadership.

“I get kind of emotional when I think about this. They’ve been here 50 plus years, and they’ve seen it all the way through. They worked with my grandparents, and they worked under my uncles’ leadership, and now mine.

“And I’m really proud to say that they’re still here. They’re giving me an opportunity to lead this business and work alongside me to do it.”

One of the most important qualities of good leadership, she says, is being “willing to listen and give people an opportunity to showcase who they are and what they can bring to your business.”

There’s a saying, she says, that “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room,” and she takes that to heart, giving people the opportunity to show what they can bring to the table.

The Pros and Cons of Generational Differences

Being a good leader, King says, also means recognizing both the challenges and opportunities that come from different generations working together.

“The approaches to how people work are so different generationally,” she says, and that’s been an obstacle to overcome.

For the older generation, she says, there’s been a challenge in transitioning to new technologies, which is something King has been spearheading.

“Fifteen years ago, we were definitely a dinosaur,” she says. “My grandparents did not believe in technology. I remember we would produce financial reports and my grandmother would be like, ‘I don’t believe that. Let me write that down on paper and do the math and make sure that this really adds up to what it’s supposed to add up to.’”

It took a couple of years, she says, to convince them that spreadsheet formulas really do work.

Today, she says, “I sometimes feel we have tech out our ears.”

“We’ve committed ourselves to being forward facing when it comes to technology and trying new things. … to make sure that our people have the resources they need to be successful.”

Not for the Faint of Heart

Sixteen years after entering the family business, King says, “I’ll tell you, trucking is not for the faint of heart. It’s a tough business to be in.”

But at the same time, she says, “it’s fun. I think that if you like people, and you understand that what you do in your business is essential to America, it makes your job so much easier.”

She keeps a sticky note on her mirror with the number of people she believes the company’s business directly impacts every day – employees and their families. It serves as something of a pep talk.

“It’s the first thing I see in the morning,” she says. It prompts her to tell herself, “Okay, get your mind right. You are going to steer the ship to make decisions for this many people and their families. So you need to make sure you’re steering the ship correctly.”

Looking to the future, King says, “People always ask me, ‘Do you want to be 1,000-truck carrier?’

“I don’t aspire to be the biggest in town. I want to make sure that we’re profitable. I want to make sure that we can take care of our people better in five years than we are today.”

And she wants to maintain and grow her grandparents’ focus on giving back to the community.

“In an industry traditionally dominated by men, Jessica King has emerged as a formidable leader, breaking barriers and maintaining her grandparents’ standards of excellence,” said Sobba in King’s nomination.

“Her journey from receptionist to owner of our family-owned trucking company is a testament to her determination, resilience, and unparalleled work ethic.”