30 Oregon Trucking Association, Inc. Oregon Truck Dispatch Multi-Generational Trucking Businesses Offer Insight into Trucking’s Past and Future By Jennifer Sitton | OTA Communications Consultant ANYONE WHO HAS worked in a multigenerational business knows that mixing business with family can be challenging, but it also has its benefits. Below, you’ll hear from four multigenerational trucking businesses that still choose to call Oregon home after decades—and in one case over a century—of operations. Whether the business was passed down from great- great-grandfathers or from father to daughter or son, the pride that comes from a family business is evident in everything these companies do. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating the perseverance of these family-owned and operated businesses and the many others who operate throughout Oregon every day. A&M Transport When Andy Owens Sr. brought home his first truck on Christmas Eve in 1972, he was looking for a job where he wouldn’t have to be on his feet all day, after years of working in logging and plywood mills. More than five decades later, that first truck purchase would turn into a multigenerational business operating more than 110 trucks on any given day. Andy Sr.’s son Andy was just 15 years old when his dad bought that truck and says that he soon learned what trucking was all about. He learned how to do maintenance on his dad’s trucks, greasing them and changing tires. “When I was 16, when we didn’t have school, I would go with my dad for a weekend and help him load and unload,” said Andy. “Unbeknownst to my mom, he would teach me how to drive. I was going up and down the freeway in a semi-truck at 16.” Andy earned a civil engineering degree from Oregon Institute of Technology and jokes that he uses his degree every day as a “commodities relocation engineer.” “In civil engineering there’s not one exact answer,” said Andy. “There are a lot of options to find the best one. That applies to trucking too. A lot of what we do every day is problem solving.” Today, Andy is the CEO of Glendale, Oregon-based A&M Transport that grew out of his dad’s first truck purchase. The family business that started with his dad driving trucks and his mom managing the books now includes his youngest
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