Former Jack Cooper Employees Once Again Hauling Ford Vehicles

Back in early January, Ford terminated its contract with the transport company Jack Cooper, with which it had previously enjoyed a relationship with for roughly 40 years as its second-largest customer. That move prompted Jack Cooper to try and renegotiate its contract with General Motors, its biggest customer, but those talks quickly broke down and led to Ford’s cross-town rival backing out as well. As one might expect, those moves led to the demise of Jack Cooper, leaving its 2,500 employees without jobs – but now, some of them are back to hauling Ford vehicles once again, just a couple of months later.

According to the Detroit Free Press, long-time Jack Cooper employee McKinley Archie gathered up some of his friends and co-workers to launch a car hauling business of their own – Squirrelly LLC. That entity is based out of Stone Mountain, Georgia, and is already hauling vehicles from the Ford Kentucky Truck plant to dealerships across the U.S., with Archie serving as its cofounder and chief compliance officer.

As one might imagine, such an endeavor isn’t easy to pull off, and Archie’s original plan of purchasing used rigs from Jack Cooper fell through given the cost of each – roughly $260,000. Thus, the group wound up leasing trucks until they had the capital to purchase 10, and the plan is to add 25 more haulers to that fleet very soon. Thus far, things are going quite well, it seems, with Squirrelly already moving nine loads consisting of around 120 Ford vehicles since late April.

“So it was quite a lot we had to raise, an arduous task for us,” Archie said. “We had go into my backyard and dig up all my savings. It’s hard to go even to a bank and say give me $3 million to start a dream. Now that we’re actually moving cars, maybe we can go back to them and show them proof of concept. But we bootstrapped all of it. It’s a great start for us. Of course, we want to get to the point where we’re moving 36 loads a day or better. Once we get our own inventory straight from the (automakers), that’ll be better.”