Offering local businesses a fair and equitable opportunity to bid on and secure contracts within the Central City/Panther Island Project, has been a long-time commitment of the Trinity River Vision Authority (TRVA). Now in its tenth year, TRVA’s Fair Contracting Program continues to recognize and join forces with *Diverse Businesses (DB).

The Fair Contracting Program’s goal is to provide at least 25% of all contracting opportunities to DBs. Additionally, each project partner commits to taking a proactive approach at obtaining a DB a goal for each contract acquired. As of today, TRVA proudly stands behind a projected commitment of 30% for combined local, state and federal contracts. Nearly a third of that commitment is in local contracts alone - which includes those led by the City of Fort Worth, Tarrant Regional Water District and TRVA.

Over the years, TRVA has watched many DBs participate as a sub-contractor with a small piece of an overall contract - only to see them secure a larger, more lucrative contract further down the road. TRVA strives to support the growth of local diverse businesses.

Recognizable growth in a company includes factors such as being awarded multiple contracts, increased award amount with each secured contract and a growing workforce within the company. Roberts Trucking, a Minority Owned Business Enterprise, is just one of many DBs that has experienced noticeable growth.

Roberts Trucking, a commercial construction materials logistics firm in the DFW area, has participated in three major remediation projects for TRVA. On each project, the transportation company was contracted to export and dispose of contaminated soils, backfill disturbed areas with clean soil and supply aggregates.

Company President, Quincy Roberts proudly reports, “We have transported 17,000+ truckloads of material combined on the three projects, grossing over $3 Million in revenues.”

“Participating on these projects has had a major impact on the company’s growth over the years,” says Roberts. “In 2011, we started work on an environmental remediation project for Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD), which now houses The Coyote Drive-In Movie Theater.” At that time, Roberts Trucking had 60 employees and by 2014, their workforce had nearly tripled. The increase in workforce was largely due to working on their second environmental remediation contract for TRVA. In two short years, and after successful completion of their third environmental remediation contract; Roberts Trucking currently employs over 320 people. “A significant amount of our hires have been from the local workforce in the City of Fort Worth in direct relation to our sub-contracts on the TRVA project and with TRWD,” claims Quincy Roberts.

Source : https://trinityrivervision.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2017-2nd-QTR.pdf

A professionally trained opera singer, Quincy Roberts returned to Dallas to take over the trucking company his grandfather founded in 1979, the year Roberts was born. In the nine years since he took the reigns, he’s expanded the business from a two-truck operation to a regional dirt-moving powerhouse with an operational capacity of more than 150 trucking units.

Source : https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/print-edition/2015/05/29/40-under-40-quincy-roberts-35-roberts-trucking.html

Roberts Trucking Inc. may not have become the largest African American-owned construction hauler in Dallas if it weren’t for the Great Recession. As the housing market collapsed and decimated consumer spending, Quincy Roberts spotted opportunities that emerged from President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package. 

Roberts, who trained to be an opera singer at Booker T. Washington High School and Indiana University, decided about 10 years ago to quit his singing career and take over the family sand and gravel hauling company in South Oak Cliff. Back then, the business was just a pair of rock trucks driven by his uncle and grandfather, who founded the company with Roberts’ grandmother in 1979. In 2004, his uncle became sick and died. His grandfather, who was approaching retirement, asked him: Do you want to keep the family business going? 

“I said, ‘absolutely, yes,’” Roberts remembers.

In 2006, Roberts began driving and learning truck mechanics while also learning how to chart financial plans, put together a balance sheet, and market his company. In those years before the recession took hold, Roberts Trucking made its money off truck brokers who would call with work. But in 2008, the phone stopped ringing. That forced Roberts to “get out in the street” and look for customers. “It was either that or go back to singing,” he says. “The recession gave me the drive to go out and find business on my own.”

In 2008, he landed a contract with the Dallas Independent School District to haul all of its aggregate. That caused, Roberts says, “an immediate jump.” 

But there was still a problem. When the stimulus contracts became available around 2009, Roberts only had three or four trucks. The high-dollar projects called for at least 15. So Roberts bulked up his insurance and partnered with other owner-operators and minority businessmen who were in similar situations.

They pooled resources and targeted huge infrastructure projects. Roberts eventually won a contract to do all the hauling for the modernization of Love Field’s taxiways and terminals. The three-year project ended in 2015.

He has worked on some of the largest recent highway and infrastructure projects around Dallas-Fort Worth, including the LBJ Freeway express lanes and Tarrant County’s Chisholm Trail Parkway. He also helped in the renovation of Terminal E at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

He’s currently hauling and performing on-site work for the repair of the Lake Lewisville dam. He’s also hauling for the major flood control project in Dallas known as the Mill Creek Tunnel, a job that entails transporting 90,000 truckloads of dirt and rock over the next two years.

Today, Roberts Trucking has 27 full-time employees and uses about 100 contractors. It carries more than 1.5 million tons of aggregates annually and has more than $10 million in annual revenue, making it the largest black-owned construction hauler in the city.

“He’s a natural marketer,” says Lin O’Neill, the lead faculty member for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program at the Dallas County Community College District. “Quincy, being a visionary, looked at the availability of government contracts, then formed this association with his competitors so he could be bigger and worthy of landing that business.” 

Roberts also has an ace up his sleeve that his competitors lack. His arts training, O’Neill believes, helped mold some of the traits he’s used to his benefit in business. “When you’re part of a stage production, you have to make your own mark but you’re also part of a team,” she says. “Being an exceptional team player has served him well.”

And now, Roberts is returning to his roots. In 2008, he noticed the Dallas Opera was holding auditions for chorus members for a production of “Porgy & Bess”—the same George Gershwin opera he had heard as a 10-year-old that pulled him toward singing. “I was only going to do that one production, but the powers that be wouldn’t let me walk away from it,” he says.

Roberts now lends his bass voice to two Dallas Opera productions a year and has joined the company’s board of trustees.

“Once the opera bug bites you there’s no escape,” says Dallas Opera General Director and CEO Keith Cerny. He says chorus members like Roberts often have second jobs in arts-related endeavors. It’s rare that one would be running a sizable business. 

Still, Roberts says he limits his singing so he can spend more time with his two young children. He also likes to get behind the wheel at least once a month and deliver a few loads. Drives are perfect for singing, and Roberts has parts to practice for two productions: Jules Massenet’s “Manon,” and the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II musical “Show Boat.” So if you’re stuck in traffic and hear an operatic voice booming from the rock truck in the next lane, don’t be surprised. “If it’s a deep bass voice,” Roberts says, “it’s probably me.”

Source : https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-ceo/2016/april/quincy-roberts-trucking/

The driver shortage appears to be getting worse, with fleets launching new and enhanced compensation programs. These include Boyd Bros. trying a weekly salary, a sizzling $50,000 team bonus program from U.S. Xpress Enterprises, and a host of other deals to recruit and retain qualified drivers.

The salary idea from Clayton, Ala.-based Boyd Bros. seems normal, but it’s an oddity for truck drivers used to pay-per-mile compensation.

Boyd’s Mission Fleet program offers its flatbed drivers $1,300 a week, or $67,600 annually, and a guaranteed 48 hours of home time each week between Friday and Sunday. Drivers also accumulate sick and vacation days on a regular basis, not after a year of work.

Recruits are looking for a new kind of driving job, said Lori Furnell, vice president of communications.

“It’s time to redefine Over-The-Road irregular route trucking. It’s harder to find drivers willing to make these kind of sacrifices — away for a time, unpredictable schedules,” Furnell said. “And we want to attract high-quality drivers. We’re looking for someone that brings stability, safety and experience.”

Boyd, a Daseke company, is seeking to bring 30 new drivers on board, she said.

Drivers ask for more predictability, said Furnell, a foreign concept to flatbed drivers who can be away from home for weeks as they crisscross the country.

Boyd requires that the Mission Fleet drivers live within a triangle encompassing Nashville, Tenn., Bowling Green, Ky., Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta, and Charlotte, N.C. to ensure that they get their 48 hours off on weekends, said Furnell.

Boyd isn’t alone in needing more drivers. American Trucking Associations last year reported the shortage at more than 50,000 drivers. Research firm FTR said the number is closer to 250,000 drivers when firms such as UPS Inc., and oil field service outfits are included.

The problem is impacting company results. YRC Worldwide disclosed extra expenses in the fourth quarter of $7.1 million due to short-term rentals and the driver shortage, and Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings reported “the challenging driver market remains the biggest headwind faced by (our) Swift Truckload (division).”

Driving teams are becoming more valuable as carriers adapt to one- and two-day delivery requirements brought about by e-commerce. Chattanooga, Tenn.-based U.S. Xpress announced its TeamMAX Bonus offering current and future team drivers the potential to earn bonuses up to $50,000 (per team), along with four weeks paid vacation a year.

TeamMAX members can earn up to 82 cents per mile, get first dibs on new trucks and receive top priority at service centers.

U.S. Xpress has more than 7,000 drivers and generates about 15% of revenues from its teams, President Eric Fuller told Transport Topics.

U.S. Xpress also is seeing more demand because some carriers did not meet the electronic logging device mandate in December, Fuller said.

“That freight is coming back into the market. Those ‘tweener’ loads, 500 to 750 miles, are not perfect for teams but we can match them up and get them out,” said Fuller.

U.S. Xpress ranks No. 21 on Transport Topics’ list of the 100 largest for-hire carriers in North America.

Green Bay, Wis.-based Schneider also seeks more teams with a sign-on bonus of up to $30,000 per team. There are opportunities in its van truckload, tanker, dedicated and less-than-truckload segments, and a driver gets the newest equipment in the fleet, Schneider promises. Schneider ranks No. 6 on the for-hire TT100.

A smaller firm taking a creative approach to compensation is Roberts Trucking, a hauler of construction aggregate and dirt in 29 company-owned trucks in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area.

President Quincy Roberts said the firm gives its employee drivers a choice of being paid an hourly rate or a commission based on the number of loads they carry.

“We wait until the end of the week and determine which approach pays them best,” said Roberts. “Usually it’s the commission. It makes them more efficient and drivers like it.”

The high demand for qualified drivers should continue through 2018, according to FTR Vice President Avery Vise. There will be plenty of freight and capacity is already maxed-out.

The industry will make operations work more efficiently and carriers will add more trucks to their fleets, said Vise. Those efforts, in a sense, mean ‘more’ drivers and the shortage may decline by the third quarter, said Vise.

But don’t relax. FTR still expects a shortage of 200,000 drivers at year’s end.

Source : https://www.ttnews.com/articles/carriers-try-creative-compensation-programs-bring-new-drivers

Quincy Roberts earned a bachelor’s degree in music, with an emphasis on vocal performance, from Indiana University in 2002. As a solo vocalist, he’s performed with groups including the Dallas Opera and the Cincinnati Symphony. Today, however, he’s singing an entirely different tune. Roberts leads Dallas-based Roberts Trucking Inc., which specializes in transporting construction materials for commercial construction companies.

Arthur Roberts Sr., Quincy’s grandfather, founded the trucking company in 1979. Quincy joined the family business after graduating from college and stepped up his involvement following the death of an uncle in 2004. “Our key to success is being prepared for new opportunities by strategically planning our growth,” he says. —John Egan

Source : https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-ceo/2017/july-august/ey-entrepreneur-of-the-year-2017/

Quincy Roberts of Roberts Trucking wanted to grow his commercial construction trucking company, but needed a line of credit. Here's how he got it.

Source : https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2017/10/05/goldman-sachs-gives-dallas-small-businesses-a.html