UTC College of Business reveals 2016 hall of fame inductees

Ted Alling
Ted Alling
photo Karen Hutton, founder and CEO of The Hutton Co., will be inducted into the UTC College of Business' Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame this year. Hutton started her business in 1996 in Nashville, in commercial construction.
photo Allan Davis
photo Barry Large

Entrepreneurs are tenacious.

And very often, go-getters. Sometimes they're quiet and thoughtful - sometimes loud, and boisterous.

Sometimes, entrepreneurs fail. Other times, they succeed.

And sometimes, they do so even to their own great surprise.

Whatever the case, Richard Becherer, chair of excellence in business and entrepreneurship at UTC, wants business students to see the whole range of people and personalities who share the entrepreneurial spirit, and especially in Chattanooga and the greater Chattanooga area, which enjoys a proud entrepreneurship heritage.

In fact, exposing business students to success - but more importantly, to the real people behind it - was a driving force behind the creation of the UTC College of Business Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame in 1999.

"Understanding that entrepreneurs are just like everyone else is an important part of what we do," said Becherer.

Today, the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame features 52 of the area's most successful business pioneers and upstarts, from Coke-bottling trailblazer John T. Lupton to Check Into Cash founder Allan Jones.

Every year, Becherer and past Hall of Fame inductees - Becherer is, himself, a member of the Hall of Fame - meet in the fall and discuss who will be next to join the distinguished group.

Last year, Covenant Transport founder and Chairman David Parker and the late Carl Austin Watson, founder of the Mountain View Auto Group, were inducted.

And this year, the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame is welcoming Karen Hutton, founder of Chattanooga-based national real estate, construction and development firm Hutton.

Also to be inducted are Ted Alling, Allan Davis and Barry Large, all partners at Lamp Post Group, and former executives of Access America Transport, the Chattanooga trucking logistics firm that was sold in 2014 to Chicago-based Coyote Logistics for hundreds of millions of dollars.

UPS bought Coyote Logistics last year for $1.8 billion.

The four new Hall of Fame members will be formally inducted into the Hall of Fame at a ceremony in April.

Becherer said this year's class is interesting because it includes Hutton, who has built a vast and successful construction company out of Chattanooga, and the Access America executive team, who represent the city's new wave of entrepreneurial spirit.

This is also Becherer's last Hall of Fame ceremony as a full-time professor at UTC. He's retiring and will now work part-time, though he'll likely remained involved with the university's college of business. A former entrepreneur himself, he also plans to spend time helping his daughter with her young business.

In all of his years of involvement with the program, Becherer said on the eve of his retirement that one Hall of Fame member, Joe Decosimo, stands out among the rest in his mind.

"I think he's quite a special guy, no doubt about that," he said.

Becherer said many entrepreneurs in the city today are connected in some way to Decosimo, or have been introduced to the right people along the way because of him.

But Becherer also said after all the years of spending time around entrepreneurs, he's noticed a few important things: the successful ones give credit to their employees, and they all say at one point they got lucky.

"The truth of the matter is that luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity," he said.

Contact staff writer Alex Green at agreen@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6480.

Karen Hutton

Founder, CEO of HuttonHutton is a Pulaski, Tenn. native, and a graduate of the the University of Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in business. She worked for her father’s construction company for five years, before leaving to start her own business in the mid-90s.Hutton successfully launched her own construction and development business in 1998, and has capitalized over the years on winning development contracts with national commercial customers like O’Reilly Auto Parts, Dollar General and lately, Wal-Mart.Hutton has built dozens of Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market grocery stores across the Southeast, including a handful in the Chattanooga area.Hutton today is a national real estate, development and construction firm with its headquarters in Chattanooga and more than 170 employees.In 2015, Hutton’s construction volume was $176 million, and Hutton companies own 208 development properties in 25 states, totalling 3.79 million square feet. Hutton’s total portfolio value is $800 million.

Ted Alling, Allan Davis and Barry Large

Former president, COO and CFO of Access America TransportPartners, Lamp Post GroupFormer fraternity brothers at Samford University, Alling, Davis and Large in 2002 founded Access America Transport, an independent, third-party logistics firm that enjoyed great success finding freight for trucking companies.Alling pitched the idea for Access America to Large after a stint working for C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., another third-party logistics provider for truckers.Access America skyrocketed to big-time profits early, and within a matter of 10 years, the three former college friends were running a $1 billion a year company.The three partners sold Access America to Chicago-based Coyote Logistics in 2014 for hundreds of millions of dollars, and UPS in 2015 bought Coyote in a $1.8 billion acquisition.Alling, Davis and Large remain partners at Lamp Post Group.

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