David Parker grew up in the trucking industry, starting at age 11 picking up garbage and washing trucks for the company his stepfather started and owned.
Parker's biological father died when he was only two. And after Clyde Fuller, founder of Southwest Motor Freight, married his mother, Parker grew up in a world filled with semi-trailers and truck drivers who made long hauls from coast to coast.
Parker graduated high school at age 16, and within a year was serving as a terminal manager in Lenoir City, Tennessee, helping to run one of the trucking distribution facilities for Southwest Motor Freight while he was attending the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
"I lived on the terminal in a house trailer just work working 70 or 80 hours a week," Parker recalls.
A half century later, the 65-year-old Parker says he has never lost his love for trucking and work ethic, even through tough times with his own company, Covenant Logistics, that he started 38 years ago after his stepfather sold Southwest Motor Freight.
Trucking, seemingly, is in the family's DNA. Parker's half brother, Max Fuller (another son of Clyde Fuller) worked with Parker and attorney Patrick Quinn at Southwest Motor Freight until an investment firm acquired the trucking giant in the mid 1980s and the trio parted ways.
Max Fuller and Quinn later founded U.S. Xpress Enterprises, which is headquartered along Interstate 75 along Jenkins Road on the eastern edge of Chattanooga. Parker decided to start his own company, Covenant Transport (now Covenant Logistics), which is headquartered along Interstate 24 in Lookout Valley on the western edge of Chattanooga.
The Chattanooga companies grew to become two of the nation's largest long-haul carriers.
About six years ago, following Quinn's death in 2011, Max Fuller stepped down as the CEO of U.S. Xpress. This summer, his son, Eric Fuller, who succeeded him as CEO, is leaving U.S. Xpress after negotiating a merger with trucking giant Knight-Swift.
A covenant with God
Parker's trucking business was born in 1985 when he and his wife, Jacqueline, prayed together during a vacation trip to Fall Creek Falls State Park. Parker says he made an agreement — or covenant — with God about his business venture.
"I said Lord, let's make a covenant together," Parker recalls. "I will work my bottom off, but Lord, I have got to have your help."
Parker says he knew about trucking sales and operations, "but I didn't know anything about asking a bank for millions of dollars; and I didn't know anything about maintenance."
Over the past 38 years, Covenant has grown to become the second-biggest long-haul team-driver trucking company in the country. Last year, company revenues topped $1 billion for the first time.
Asked what has been key to his success, Parker doesn't hesitate: "It's been Jesus," he says.
But he is also quick to credit his wife, Jacqueline, who worked with him for three decades before retiring seven years ago.
Parker says the company culture at Covenant is based on empathy, servanthood and virtue.
"I have never in my life walked in on a Monday morning and asked who went to church," Parker says. "We have atheists who work here; we have Muslims who work here; we have Christians of all denominations that work here. What we have here is freedom.
"We have Bible studies that go on here every Wednesday morning before work; and we have people who ask me to pray with them or their children. There is freedom here, but we try to be a Christ-centered company that tries to treat people in that manner."
Eyes on the horizon
"I will probably be 75 and still coming into the office because I love it," says Parker, who remains the largest single shareholder at Covenant. "It's a great passion of mine and I still love everything that I am involved in in this company."
Parker remains a hands-on manager, often spending as much time in the company's first-floor "war room" overseeing truck shipments and company contracts as he does up in his spacious third-floor corporate office.
"I still look at every load at least three times a week," Parker says. "To this day, I still get excited when I see an 'Atlanta-to-Chicago' shipment or a load from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. At the heart of it, I guess I'm a dispatcher and a salesman. And I'm always looking for that next load."
On a typical day, Parker says he gets up just after 4 a.m., works out at his home gym for an hour or more before driving to his office, where he then usually spends another hour reading the Bible and praying in his third-floor office before opening the doors to begin work at 9 a.m.
His corner office in Covenant's corporate headquarters includes study manuals on the books of the Bible, which he immerses himself in every morning.
But Parker says he is investing more time and effort now in preparing others to lead Covenant in the future. Both Parker's son and daughter work at Covenant, but neither is currently interested in succeeding their father as head of the company.
"They saw how hard I worked at this and they have a different calling, which I'm perfectly fine with," he says.
Joey Hogan, who has been at Covenant for 27 years including more than 15 years as president or chief operating officer, is retiring in July. Paul Bunn, who has been at Covenant for 14 years, was elevated to company president in January. Tripp Grant, who joined the company in 2019, was promoted to chief financial officer last year.
"I spend a lot of my time now getting ready for the future," Parker says.
Finding the right lane
For all his business success, Parker says "there were times we worried about how we would make payroll," especially during previous economic downturns. The Parkers took out a second mortgage on their home in the 1980s to get the business started and keep it going in the early 90s.
"We had every credit card up to its max trying to make payroll because we were growing so rapidly," he said.
Covenant Transport grew rapidly through the 1990s, adding about 400 trucks a year and adding to the company's debt. When markets slowed, the company struggled, especially in the highly competitive over-the-road market that was so dependent upon daily shipments.
Parker, at the urging of Hogan and others, went to the board of directors in 2015 to recommend a shift in the company, moving away from being primarily an over-the-road carrier to a company that moved deeper into the supply chain. Through a series of acquisitions and new initiatives, Covenant has moved more into dedicated freight for some businesses, freight logistics planners for others and even warehousing goods for some companies.
By 2020, the company was renamed Covenant Logistics to reflect its change in focus.
In for the long haul
In March 2020 when COVID-19 shut down many of Covenant's biggest customers, much of the company's trucking fleet was idled.
"We made some decisions at that point, not knowing what was going to happen, and we exited all of the OTR (over-the-road) business," Parker recalls.
At the time, Parker says Covenant had $347 million in debt. But by December of 2020, by giving up its lower margin over-the-road operations and repositioning the company, Covenant cut its total debt to only $87 million.
"There ain't no doubt to me, that God helped us during a tough time," he says.
As the economy softens this year and freight shipments and rates decline, Parker says Covenant is positioned differently than in previous downturns when the company lost money and had to struggle to survive.
Covenant Logistics earned a record $108.7 million, or $5.84 per share, on revenues of more than $1.2 billion for all of 2022.
"This year won't be as great with the recession in our industry, but it will be the second-best year in the history of our company," Parker says.
Over more than three decades, Parker has made about 20 company acquisitions, including a $100 million purchase announced in April of the poultry shipping company Lew Thompson & Son in Huntsville, Arkansas. The latest acquisition expands Covenant's dedicated freight lines into the poultry industry, hauling feed to chicken farms and live chickens to processing facilities.
It's the type of specialized, dedicated freight where Parker sees the most opportunity.
"What is hard and complex to do? We don't run from it, we run to it because we see that we can bring value to our customer," Parker says.
David Parker at a glance
* Job: CEO of Covenant Logistics Group, Inc.
* Age: 65
* Career: David Parker is the stepson of Clyde Fuller, who founded Southwest Motor Freight, where Parker began working in his youth. After Fuller sold Southwest Motor Freight in 1985 and Parker completed his six-month non-compete clause, he started Covenant Transport, later renamed to Covenant Logistics. He took the company public in 1994. Covenant sales topped $1 billion last year for the first time.
* Other key roles: Parker is a deacon at City Church where he has worshipped since he was 19 years old when the church as known as the Lee Highway Church of God. He also has been a member of the Trade and Transportation Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and has served on boards or committees of several trucking associations.
* Family: Parker and his wife, Jacqueline, who worked with him at Covenant for more than three decades, are the parents of two children and reside in Ringgold, Georgia.
Photography by Robin Rudd / Covenant Logistics CEO David Parker in the companys Chattanooga offices.