A. I was born and raised in Gum Pond, Alabama, not far from Eva (about 18 miles from Cullman). I went to school at Gum Pond and then Eva. I worked in a grocery store and gristmill for my daddy on top of farming. 

Daddy always had Ford pickups. He had a ‘39 model and then a ‘41 model, both were new when he got them. The first one I drove was the ‘41 model. And I was probably 7 or 8 years old. Daddy always dug up Bermuda grass out of the fields. I wanted to drive that truck so bad, he would let me drive if I would dig that grass up and haul it off. So I got to drive that truck.

The first truck I bought was an old ‘36 model International pickup. I think we gave $35.00 for it. Me and a friend of mine bought it. We would go around and pick up scrap metal and scrap iron. A long time ago people would dump their trash, old stoves and stuff like that on the side of the road in hollows and woods. We would take that old international and pick up all the metal. We would pick ‘em up, load ‘em up and haul ‘em off and sell ‘em for scrap. Sometimes we would make $10 per day. We did that for a couple of years. We just did it because we wanted something to drive. We made enough for gas and sometimes an RC-Cola and a pack of peanuts.

The second truck I had was a ‘42 model Ford, a short truck with a 12 ft bed. I used it to haul coal, shavings, saw dust for chicken houses, lumber from saw mills and logs to the saw mills, that would have been in 1949.

Q. When were you born? 

A. 1935 and I was 12 years old when I got that first old truck.

Q. Weren’t you required to have a driver’s license at that time?

A. Yeah, I wasn’t old enough to get ‘em. I was doing all my trucking out in the country. You know we 
never had any police as far out as we lived. I didn’t go to town in that truck. It was all dirt roads back in the 
woods. Then a few years later I did get my driver’s license. When I turned 16, I was sitting at the 
courthouse waiting on them to open. At that time I bought a ‘46 model Ford truck, 14-foot bed on that 
one, and it had windows, the other one didn’t have windows.

A. I used that old ‘46 model for I guess about a year, maybe a year and half before I got the first new vehicle I ever owned. It was a ‘52 model ford truck. I was still hauling shavings, sawdust, and coal then I started hauling fertilizer from Nashville and Mobile, getting a little stretched out. 

Two or three years later, about 1954, I started with a trailer. By 1955 I had 25 or 30 trailers and about that many tractors. 

A. I believe that was when we got an accountant. Yeah, it could have started when I was 14 years old I guess which would have been ‘49. But we didn’t really get set up in an office, and look like a trucking company until 1955. 

Q. Was that at Eva?

A. Well we called it Eva because that was where I lived but we had the office in Cullman, on old 31 Hwy. at Phelan. 

Q. Was that back in the ‘50’s?

A. Yeah, 1955 was when we opened the first office on hwy. 31. I started off with that office and didn’t have any hired help at first. It just was me. Some of the drivers would help, like Hulon “Jim” Caudle. He would help and sometimes Albert Caudle and their brother Malcom. They all helped me some and all drove for me some. I had a couch in the little one room office and lot’s of times I’d spend the night on that couch. I lived with mother and daddy, I didn’t want the calls coming in all night at their house. So if it was busy or if I thought one of the trucks might have some problems I would just sleep on the couch in the office.

It was in the late 50’s, I started leasing in, mostly tractors. I think I got up to owing about 100 trailers at one time. Most of them had bunker and blowers, where you put ice in front of them and turn the fan on. We didn’t have reefers back then. We got reefers on down the road. Then we sold our company trucks and leased all the trucks and furnished the trailers. We hauled mostly chickens. We hauled all of Marshall Durbin’s chickens. Most of the time we were loading 25 loads a day out of Jasper and Mobile. The chickens went to Michigan and Ohio up in that area.

Q. Is this up into the ‘60’s?

A. Yeah from ‘55 on up into the early ‘60’s. In the 60’s I had Hoyt Latham working for me. Faye Marty started in ‘72 and Bill Marty a couple of years later. 
 

Q. How did you get into flying airplanes?

A. I decided to get a pilot’s license and a plane to carry customers around. In 1961 I got a pilot’s license. Then went on to a flying school and got a commercial license so I could fly for hire and charter. I did all of Marshall Durbin’s flying for them. I carried Bob Parrish and Dick Hill all over the country. We’d go to Michigan, New York, Texas, Iowa, anywhere they could sell poultry. I was hauling all the chickens so every time we called on a customer I got to know that customer and we got all the business. 

Later I bought another plane and started chartering to different people. Every Sunday I would run the plane at the Cullman airport, carrying people for short sightseeing rides. I think I had seven different airplanes over the years. I had 2 at one time and did a lot of charter work. I flew airplanes until about ‘72 or ‘73 maybe later than that maybe ‘74. 

A. I guess first of all I started running a fishing boat in Florida and met a lot of people. One of them was Hank Jr. that’s when I got in the music business. I was involved in that from ‘73 until ‘86. About 13 years.

Let’s see after that I guess everybody knows the rest of the story. I went on to get a commercial U.S. Coast Guard's captains license for a 100-ton ship. I started chartering and fishing off the coast of Panama City, Florida. I enjoyed that because I got to take a lot of customers fishing and enjoyed being with them.

All that time we only had one company. Later we got jrs logistics going and the kids got James A. Smith Transportation going. Now I live in Panama City fl. I go back and forth and stay in Cullman part time. I enjoy coming up and meeting all the truckers and seeing all the people. I still like trucks and everything about the trucking business. I keep it on my mind all the time and can’t sleep at night for thinking about it. When I’m in Florida or traveling, I’m still on the phone back and forth from the office to the truckers and dispatchers for probably 4 or 5 hours a day. (I have big phone bills!)