Eagle Transport Corp. supplies fuel to gas stations and convenience stores along the eastern seaboard with its fleet of 350 trucks.

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Consumers throughout the East Coast rely on Eagle Transport Corp., even if they’ve never heard its name. The Rocky Mount, N.C.-based company supplies fuel to gas stations and convenience stores along the eastern seaboard – from Delaware City, Del., to Miami – with its fleet of 350 trucks.

The company, in its current form, was formed by now Chairman A. Donald Stallings, who formerly played professional football for the Washington Redskins. When his father, who founded the company’s predecessor, fell ill in the ‘60s, Stallings left football to run the company. He transitioned it from a coal distribution company, to an owner of several convenience stores and fuel distributor, and incorporated it in 1969.

Eagle Transport sold its remaining convenience stores 10 years ago, and has since focused its efforts on the distribution business, hauling gas, diesel and ethanol through 24 strategic locations. President Bill George says the company’s volume and miles traveled makes it one of the top-five of similar carriers in the United States, and No. 2 on the East Coast. It delivers 450,000 truckloads each year – the equivalent of 3.75 billion gallons of fuel.

Unlike some competitors, he says, the company owns all of its trucks and employs all of its drivers directly. “We have no owner/operators or lease trucks,” he says. “Everything we have is uniform.”

Driving Technology
In addition to delivering fuel, Eagle Transport also manages each customer’s fuel inventory, tracking how many gallons each store sells every day and using that data to determine when it will need its next delivery. Deliveries must be made before a customer runs out of product, but not before it has enough vacant space in its tanks to hold it. Previously, the company manually analyzed this data using a 48-hour turnaround.

“We used to take the store readings from yesterday and plan loads for tomorrow,” George says. “What we discovered was that supply allocation issues and spikes in sales now mean the information needs to be more live. We can’t take yesterday’s data for tomorrow; we need it now.”

In 2006, Eagle Transport installed electric on-board recorders and GPS units and two-way communication devices on all its vehicles. The company is now in phase two of this technology upgrade, installing geofence systems at customer locations. This allows it to immediately track deliveries, inventories and automatically bill customers.  

“We know if a truck just loaded 8,500 gallons on a customer’s account, and when the truck gets to [a certain address], he’s at the right place, because the place has been geofenced,” George explains. “We know how many gallons of fuel the customer has in the ground, how many we have on board for him, and that the gallons will fit in the vacant space of his tanks. Once the geofencing system is optimized, the system will tell us the next logical step for the driver, based on his hours of service left, maintenance on the truck and if he’s qualified to load at the next place.”

Flexible Culture
George says that if he had to sum up Eagle Transport’s philosophy in one word, it would be “flexible.” That’s important when dealing with a wide range of customers. “If a customer wants Cadillac service, we give it to them; if they want Lexus service, we give that; if they want something less, we give that too. As things change, as they are now with ethanol hitting the East Coast, we have to be flexible.”
Eagle Transport employs 900 people, including 710 drivers. George says the company maintains a casual atmosphere and has low turnover.

The company’s goal is to be the best in its industry, but not necessarily the biggest, he notes. “We are constantly looking at technology,” he says. “It’s a convoluted, complex supply chain and a fast, entertaining industry. We have 60 dispatchers, and those people are the ones who ID the need for a load and put the components together. They plan all the elements. They don’t want to be doing nothing – they want a constant challenge, and we give them that. I usually compare it to putting a 1,000-piece puzzle together, but doing it on the hood of a truck going 50 miles an hour.”