Trio of Chattanooga businessmen become youngest UTC Hall of Fame inductees

Photographed at the offices of the Lamp Post Group on Monday, Apr. 4, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn., Allan Davis, Barry Large and Ted Alling, from left, are the founders of Access America Transport, a company they sold in 2014. They have recently launched Dynamo, a company that is a logistics accelerator.

In the center of a large circular table where Access America Transport founders and Lamp Post Group founding partners Ted Alling, Barry Large and Allan Davis sit, black Internet wires and a white Macbook charger reach out of a hole like the wild tentacles of an unseen machine monster.

And there's also a triangular conference call module on the table, and several empty black office chairs around it, and workers pass by the frosted glass fishbowl going here and there, developing a future both real and hoped-for in this 6,000-square-foot office space on the second floor of the historic Loveman's Building downtown.

In one corner of the Lamp Post office, the Waypaver Foundation is think-tanking its way toward its mission: "pushing humanity forward - and outward, toward the final frontier."

Space, that is, and the ultimate goal of establishing a moon colony.

In another partitioned space, the brains behind Torch work toward the more down-to-earth goal of simply making the Internet a safer place for kids and families.

Alling, Large and Davis are business winners, and these are their spoils: millions in their pockets, a city considered in the midst of a start-up renaissance before them and a portfolio of businesses with their fingerprints all over them.

And all three are still under 40.

They will be the youngest ever inductees into the UTC College of Business Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame tonight when they are brought into the elite fraternity of Chattanooga business leaders.

The trio's induction is considered a significant moment in the history of the Hall of Fame, with its 52 distinguished members, by one of the figures most closely associated with the program since its inception in 1999.

"They're kind of the new entrepreneurs to the city," said Richard Becherer, chair of excellence in business and entrepreneurship at UTC.

Becherer said looking at the current members of the Hall of Fame - which includes Coke bottling leader Jack Lupton, Little Debbie snack maker O.D. McKee and current U.S. Senator and former developer Bob Corker, among others - and adding now Alling, Large and Davis, "it shows depth" in the city's entrepreneurial scene, which has been strong for more than 100 years now.

Alling, Large and Davis don't shy away from their success.

Alling, president of Access America before it sold in 2014 after becoming a $500 million-a-year company, said he always believed the three former college buddies would someday be millionaires, though it was unclear at first when, and by doing what.

Back at Samford University in suburban Birmingham, Ala., the three Sigma Nu brothers hatched a plan to open a Smoothie King in downtown Chattanooga, said Davis.

"At this time, we didn't have one," said Alling.

"It was 1999," added Large.

It didn't work out, the three graduated and eventually went separate ways - for a while.

Later on, however, opportunity brought the friends and former fraternity brothers back together in Chattanooga (Large and Davis' hometown) under the Access America roof.

Alling had been working for C.H. Robinson, a third-party logistics firm and later competitor of Access America, and he pitched an idea for an independent logistics company to Large, who was working for his father at Chattanooga-based Key James Brick.

Alling's pitch was simple: help freight movers find tonnage to carry to and from contract jobs to increase each truck's profitability.

He came in with a working knowledge of the logistics game, thanks to his time at C.H. Robinson.

"If he would've gone into medical sales, it would've been a very different business," said Large.

Davis was later recruited to join the team at Access America.

Donning a T-shirt at the office, Davis is the master-mind of operations, according to his business partners.

"He will bring the most creative solution to any problem," said Alling.

Each of the three say their system works, and their friendship has survived being business partners because they each bring unique skills to the team, and because at one point, they hired a director of happiness to help them work out issues of ego and interest at the office.

"I think we all know what lanes we tend to be good in," said Alling. "We often drift into each others' lanes, but we trust each other wholeheartedly."

Alling is the hyper-confident salesman and marketer. He's always aggressively moving forward.

Davis is analytical, and would rather be boots-on-the-ground fixing problems than sitting through sales meetings.

Large is calculated, grounded and often the one who reins in the others when the ideas get too grandiose. He and Davis were friends from high school when they arrived at Samford, and before Alling's arrival.

Today, the three remain close, live in Chattanooga and eat lunch together almost daily. Recently, they posted a photo of themselves with billionaire Mark Cuban, sitting courtside at an NBA game at the home stadium of Cuban's Dallas Mavericks basketball team.

The 2014 sale of Access America to Coyote Logistics propelled the trio to millionaire status, but when Coyote was later bought out by UPS, they again reaped significant benefits thanks to their holdings in the Chattanooga-based arm of the company, which still operates out of Warehouse Row.

They declined to say how much they netted from Coyote's purchase by UPS, but "I think we were very pleased," said Large.

He also said Access America was approaching a point at the time of the sale to Coyote, when its owners would have to consider offering public stock, and "the three of us weren't that interested in being executives at a public company," said Large.

Why?

"I think there are start-up people, and big-time corporate people, and I think they're very different skill sets," said Davis.

The Alling, Large and Davis trio consider themselves builders, and competitors - unsatisfied with taking the money and riding off into the sunset. Instead, they're still in Chattanooga and now starting a new project, a logistics accelerator program coming this summer called Dynamo, and intent on continuing to bring industry talent to Chattanooga and to establish the city as the top logistics town in the country.

They believe they also have a part to play in furthering the city's entrpreneurial mission, and establishing the infrastructure - downtown housing, emphasizes Alling - necessary to make the city's trajectory sustainable.

There also are side projects here and there, like newly-formed, nonprofit Metro Ideas at the Lovemans Building, the trio are comfortable getting behind now, without the specific purpose of turning a profit.

But those things must have their place, said Large, and can't risk hurting the venture investors' bottom line.

The trio also believes they're still at least a decade out from their peaks. And that the sale of Access America to Coyoto in 2014 was merely the end of their first act as businessmen.

Come July, 10 teams from around the globe will set up residence at Lamp Post headquarters, and under the tutelage of Alling, Large and Davis, as well as England-based logistics veteran John Bradford, try to establish new companies and win big investment dollars from a fund headed by Alling, Large and Davis.

Call it the beginning of their second act.

"Check back in a couple of months, because it's going to be wild," said Alling. "I think it's going to be really wild."

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