Bill Davis sells trucking business, reflects on legacy

Above: Bill and Gail Davis, with their dog Maddie

By Andrea Bruner, White River Now

After a half century in the trucking business, Bill Davis says it’s time to shift gears and slow down.

He’s handing the keys to the business over to Joey Bray, who has been with Bill Davis Trucking for 21 years.

“I’m 74 and we’ve been doing it 50 (years) – I believe it’s time to retire,” Bill said.

—

Bill was born in Fayetteville and said he was about 5 or 6 when his dad, a truck salesman, took a job and moved the family to Little Rock. “When I got out of school, I went to work for him selling trucks,” Bill said.

As a boy, Bill said he delivered newspapers, mowed yards and worked at a service station to earn money, so working hard was nothing new to him.

One of their customers at Peterbilt was Julian Martin, who had his own trucking company, J-Mar. Julian’s son, Mark Martin, was just getting started in the racing industry.

“Julian Martin gave me a wonderful opportunity,” Bill said. “Mark was starting to race and Julian wanted to spend less time trucking, and he brought me up here to not only learn the business but also take up some of the slack with the things he’d done. I always say I got a doctorate in trucking from Julian.”

Bill was a very successful Peterbilt truck salesman, wife Gail said, but Bill decided owning trucks suited him better than selling them. He laughed and said he didn’t have a lot to lose, but he was sure he could make a go of the trucking business.

“I always say I didn’t wait for success – I went on without it,” Bill said.

“She got an apartment and a P.O. Box – she was sure I wouldn’t last here six months,” Bill said, with Gail agreeing: “He was a city boy.”

He joked that running trucks was not as financially feasible as selling them, at least for the first part of his career, but he and Gail made it work.

“My grandfather was an enormous influence – he certainly had no education but was street smart, and he passed that on to me,” Bill said. “One of the things he taught me early on was you’re going to work hard because you have to, if you’re going to have anything; work for yourself.”

He was working at Peterbilt when he met Gail.

“I had a bottled water business and went looking for new customers. They were building that Cal Ark facility on the new Benton highway. They were in a little work trailer and I thought, ‘Oh, they probably need my services,’” she recalled. “I stopped in and met Bill’s dad before I ever met him.”

“The guy who worked for me quit, so I was delivering the bottles of water. Bill was there and said, ‘Let me help you with that.’ That was the beginning,” she said, laughing.
Gail was originally from Batesville; when her stepfather became ill, she sold her business and moved back to her hometown to help him.
Some months later, Bill moved to Batesville as well and called Gail, “and the rest is history,” she said.

“She got an apartment and a P.O. Box – she was sure I wouldn’t last here six months,” Bill said, with Gail agreeing: “He was a city boy.”

—

After a few years in the trucking business, the next Davis venture was racing.

“My dad and I were fans and had gone to some races,” said Bill, who had done a little motocross racing of his own previously.

In 1987, as Julian and Mark Martin got into the world of stock car racing, Bill and his dad pitched in to help with the pit crew. “I was either the gas man or the jack man. I liked jacking a lot better but everybody else did too, so I ended up the gas man more than anything,” Bill said.

“We were going to run 15 races out of the backyard at Bethesda, and it grew into 350 employees, four airplanes, six teams,” Bill continued. “This was just before NASCAR just exploded. Mark had been over there for about three years and could see it was coming. … He just pushed and shoved and kicked and shamed me to move over there.”

“We had some guys around here helping us and just ran a few races,” Gail said. “Mark said, ‘You can do this, you need to move to North Carolina.’”

So while Bill moved to North Carolina, Gail stayed in Arkansas to run the trucking business, flying back and forth.

Gail said people in Batesville really didn’t know the true scope of Bill Davis Racing, although the first full-time driver coming on board the team in the Busch Series was a rookie by the name of Jeff Gordon.

When they got a Winston Cup sponsor, that’s when Bill said they’d “made it” – they were in the major leagues. The team expanded throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s and won the Daytona 500 in 2002 with driver Ward Burton, but Bill said the racing was a “grind” and after two decades he was ready to retire.

“The economy in ’07 went totally upside down, and the sponsors all got scared and started backing away,” he said. “I’ve always said you had to be more a salesman for sponsors than a racer. We built really nice race cars, but we weren’t salesmen. Even back then they would have five – now they have 35 people making cold calls. They sponsor one race at a time. It’s a whole different deal than it was. We were there for the good days, the glory days I say.”

In 1998, Julian and his wife and daughter died in a plane crash, and the Chimney Rock acreage at Concord came up for sale.

“I always wanted a ranch in the country, and this place was so beautiful and unique with the rocks and all. We came out here at Thanksgiving and Joey rode us around. … I think I was sold before we left the property,” Bill said.

Gail said she knew they would one day run cattle out there. “By the end of March, we had 10 black cows; by June I think we had 100.”

Bill said his grandfather had been in the cattle business, and it was something Bill always loved and wanted to do from a very young age.

In 2006, they started a cattle business and had their first sale in 2007. Chimney Rock has auctions in the spring and fall, and its reputation for quality is world renowned at this point.

It’s been a bumpy road at times, he acknowledged, but he found the secret to success in hard work and doing something he loves. He also said it’s important to “surround yourself with really good people – hire people smarter than you are because they’re out there.”

“Stay focused, do something you enjoy and work hard,” he added.

“This was my dream,” Bill said, acknowledging that Gail was ready to slow down and he was ready to start on something new.

 

“I’d learned about trucking and I’d learned all about racing, and I said, ‘I’m not interested in cattle. I’ll just be the hostess.’ So that’s what I’ve been,” Gail said.

—

Today, the Davises enjoy their home with Maddie, a black and white dog who showed up one day at the trucking company when she was about eight months old. Groomers and people who show dogs have said Maddie is a Tibetan terrier, but the Davises said the chance of a full-blooded, rare breed showing up in Salado, Arkansas, are “slim.”

Maddie arrived at the trucking company dirty, hungry and in need of a home. “The guys at the shop call her Lotto,” Bill said with a laugh. “Gail wouldn’t let me have her, but she wouldn’t leave. She stayed around the shop.”

Gail said she already had two big, long-haired dogs that had to be groomed daily, but Bill kept talking about the new arrival. As they were preparing to leave for North Carolina the following day, Gail and Bill took Maddie to the vet and the groomer before loading her up in the bus.

“The rest is history,” Gail said.

That was 2016 and she’s still the king of the bus, Bill added.

—

Bill said he could not imagine working a 9-to-5 job within the same four walls every day. Instead, he made a career out of transporting fresh produce from California to Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama, then expanded into hauling East Coast freight.

Bray, who Bill said will continue to lead Bill Davis Trucking, currently with 120 employees and 40 trucks, to a bright future.

“It just made sense to us, and it’s still the brand,” Bill said, explaining that Bray plans to keep the name, location and employees. “He’s a smart guy, he’s a trucker and he’s so excited about it, and that’s what it takes.”

It’s been a bumpy road at times, he acknowledged, but he found the secret to success in hard work and doing something he loves.

He also said it’s important to “surround yourself with really good people – hire people smarter than you are because they’re out there.”

“Stay focused, do something you enjoy and work hard,” he added.

“Batesville, Arkansas has been very, very good to Bill and Gail Davis. We’ve made some wonderful friends over the years,” Bill continued, naming people like Boris Dover, Dale Cole and Larry Shaw.

“They’ve been our champions,” Gail said.

“If this were Little Rock, you’d be just a number,” Bill added. “You don’t have a personal relationship (with your banker) who comes out to your house for lunch. I can’t imagine that I would have been accepted or helped or made friends anywhere else.”

—

“I was kind of the dreamer, get the freight deal and the equipment, but Gail is the one who ran the business and counted the nickels and dimes,” Bill said. “I wouldn’t have made it without her.”

Bill said now that he’s sick, his outlook is different. While he’s not sure how much time he has left, he’s determined to enjoy whatever that amount is.

“There’s now the 500th Bill Davis truck on the road,” Bill said. He said the driver is Ralph Thatch Jr., a 20-year BDI employee whose father not only drove for J-Mar but also was the driver when Julian Martin purchased his 500th truck as well.

Bill and Gail have no children of their own, and while he has seven nieces and nephews, they have their own interests and careers far removed from the trucking and cattle businesses. That made it easy to sell to Bray, who Bill said will continue to lead Bill Davis Trucking, currently with 120 employees and 40 trucks, to a bright future.

“It just made sense to us, and it’s still the brand,” Bill said, explaining that Bray plans to keep the name, location and employees. “He’s a smart guy, he’s a trucker and he’s so excited about it, and that’s what it takes.”

“Our people that have worked there have been with us for so long, we could have had an advantage selling to a big company, financially, but our friends that have worked there might not have had a job. It made us happy, he’s happy, the people are happy so it’s a win-win,” Gail said. “We always had such pride seeing one of our trucks on the road, and it still does.”

All images by Andrea Bruner, White River Now