Terminal.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: Carolina Freight Carriers Corp. - Includes interview with Chairman Lary Scott - Cover Story

Behind the wheel of the old Carolina Freight Corp., Lary Scott explored every avenue of turning it around. The best route, he found, was the end of the road.

In the end, despite all the complex schemes to juggle operating ratios and balance profitability against people's jobs, it came down to a simple decision for Lary Scott, the new man brought in to save the old Carolina Freight Corp.: Sell it or shut it down.

Two years of change, trying dozens of ways to dodge that dilemma, had come to naught. The city-limits sign still says, "Welcome to Cherryville - Headquarters of Carolina Freight Corp." Which it's not - not since last year, when Scott moved the headquarters down the road to Charlotte. Even the name of the state's largest less-than-truckload carrier had been changed, to WorldWay Corp.

Retired Chairman Kenneth Younger had gone looking for somebody tough enough and smart enough to rescue the company. Lary Scott was his man. He had cut costs, slashed jobs, torn what had been built over six decades into pieces he scattered across the nation. "You can't keep doing it the way it was when you're losing your butt," Younger had said. "Lary can handle it."

But in the end, it became apparent Scott, 58, had been hitched to an oversized load neither he nor anybody else could pull. On Saturday, July 8, the WorldWay board met and unanimously voted to accept a tender offer from Fort Smith-based Arkansas Best Corp. The $1.1 billion freight carrier agreed to pay $11 a share, about $72 million, and assume $70 million in WorldWay debt. (The stock had traded as high as $22 in 1991.)

The profitable pieces likely will remain intact as Arkansas Best subsidiaries. Carolina Freight Carriers, the Cherryville-based centerpiece that contributed 67% of WorldWay's revenue last year, won't.

"I believe there will be significant layoffs," says Perry Boyle, a transportation analyst with Alex. Brown & Sons in Baltimore.

"I think Arkansas Best will fold Carolina Freight operations into their existing ABF freight network, and they won't need a lot of the terminals and a lot of the head count, so they will end up dovetailing the Carolina Freight Carriers labor force into ABF on the basis on seniority."

And Scott? "I don't know if there's a place for me at Arkansas Best," he says. Last year, he made more than $399,000. According to the 1995 proxy, he has a golden parachute of 2.99 times his average annual pay. Based on his '94 and '95 compensation, he will get at least $877,800.

"He's a good man," Younger says. "He did a good job. It's pure garbage he was brought in to scuttle the company. I was the one that brought him in here. It just didn't work."

At first glance, Lary Scott seems ill-cast as an ogre. The father of three grown sons, he's a product of small-town Bedford, Ohio, where his father taught school. His mother, business agent for the school system, named him Lary with one "r" because she figured people would call him Lawrence if she spelled it with two.

He became fascinated by big rigs while studying for a business degree at Bowling Green State...