Dave Jackson, Knight-Swift CEO, speaks during the Truckload Carriers Association's 2023 convention in Orlando, Florida.

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Knight-Swift CEO turns over fleet to 'next generation'

Feb. 28, 2024

The company’s CFO has taken the helm from Dave Jackson at one of the country’s largest carriers.

Saying it’s time for “the next generation” to move up, Dave Jackson stepped down as president and CEO of Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings Inc., the No. 3 carrier on the 2024 FleetOwner 500 list of the nation’s largest for-hire fleets.

Jackson, 48, started working at what was then Knight Transportation in 2000 and rose through that company’s finance ranks to become its president in early 2011 and CEO at the beginning of 2015. A little more than two years later, he helped orchestrate the truckload megamerger with Swift Transportation, which created a company with 23,000 power units and 77,000 trailers. Subsequent acquisitions—most notably those of ACT and U.S. Xpress (see sidebar)—have pushed those numbers to more than 29,000 trucks and nearly 90,000 trailers.

“We are grateful for Dave’s service as CEO over the past nine years, a period that has been transformational for the company and rewarding for our stockholders,” Executive Chairman Kevin Knight said in a statement Feb. 27. “Dave will always be part of the Knight-Swift family, and we wish him all the best.”

Taking over the reins at Phoenix-based Knight-Swift is Adam Miller, 43, the company CFO since September 2017, who has been with the company for more than two decades. Filling Miller’s former seat in turn is Andrew Hess, who previously was senior vice president of M&A and leader of the finance team at Swift pre-merger.

“Adam and Andrew are ready, the timing is right, the company is well positioned, and they have my full support,” Jackson said in a statement. “I look forward to my next chapter.”

Jackson’s sudden exit comes a little more than a month after he and his team reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $10.7 million due primarily to nearly $72 million of red ink from the third-party insurance business that the company is getting out of. But Jackson also reported that the tough truckload market had more than cut in half Knight-Swift’s operating profits from that business, which is also busy integrating U.S. Xpress’s operations.

At the time, Jackson also said that “the unusual degree of uncertainty regarding the direction and magnitude of outcomes from bid season, the timing and degree of an inflection in market conditions, and the difficulty assessing prevailing levels of demand as a result of weather disruptions in January” had led him and his team to give only two-quarters of guidance versus the customary full-year outlook.

“There is a place where we simply cannot concede any more,” Jackson said of some shippers looking for one more price cut. “We are definitely in that place to where the alternative to accepting rate decreases is we have less commitments.”

Investors took the CEO change in stride: Shares of Knight-Swift (Ticker: KNX) fell less than 1% Feb. 27 to $57.46. They have risen about 5% over the past six months, growing the company’s market capitalization to about $9.3 billion.

About the Author

Geert De Lombaerde | Senior Editor

A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of experience in business journalism. Since 2021, he has written about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications FleetOwner, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, Oil & Gas Journal, and T&D World.

With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati. He later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector and many of its publicly traded companies.