Bruce Daniel can tell you the exact day Huff & Puff Trucking out of Bradyville, Tennessee, was founded.

“It was August 15, 1981,” he recalls. “Because that was the day I married my wife and business partner, Melodie!”

Some 40 years later, Huff & Puff Trucking is a small company with a big reputation for customer service and employee loyalty.

Farming and Teaching Leads to Trucking

Bruce and Melodie didn’t plan on starting up a trucking company. 

They wanted to be farmers, with Melodie bringing in extra money as a teacher.

Pimento peppers were big in Middle Tennessee in the 1980s. The Daniels had such large crops, they started leasing heavy trucks to get them to markets in Atlanta.

It wasn’t long before a friend pointed out that they had enough volume to purchase their own truck. The International cabover they bought resides in a place of honor at Huff & Puff headquarters today.

But a new truck meant finding work to support the payments.

So Bruce and Melodie both started hustling.  

“I believe you’ve got to huff and puff to make a living,” Bruce says. “I’m not afraid to go and ask for business. And I’m not afraid to be persistent. I’m just stubborn, I guess. But that’s what you have to do if you want to succeed."

The Daniels’ farming connections led to tobacco contracts out of South Carolina and hauling decorative plants grown near their home to Home Depot outlets in the South. 

Then, through the sheer force of his personality, Bruce won a contract hauling air conditioning units for a manufacturing company in the area.

One truck became two.

Two trucks became three.

Three trucks became five…

If we weren’t running our trucks, we were hurting,” Bruce says now. “Which is why I was always hustling to find us new business partners.”

“One main thing we did was to make sure to answer the phone at any hour, 24/7,” Melodie says. “If we got a call at midnight from someone wanting us to move some freight, we got out of bed. Because if that’s what it took, we did it.”

“Trucking takes a lot of hard work and dedication,” Bruce says. “You don’t go to the house at 5 o'clock every day. You may be out there until 10 o'clock or later. And that never changes. I tell the people in our operations department today, ‘Running a trucking company is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that moves.’”

Today, Huff & Puff has grown into a respectable long-haul fleet numbering around 108 trucks and 150 employees. 

Bruce and Melodie are adamant that growth is thanks to an unwavering focus on reliability and customer service.

Family and Community 

The secret to attracting good people and growing a successful fleet is to be involved in your community, Bruce says.

“We recruit out of all the schools locally. I don’t want a kid to graduate from high school within 45 minutes of here that doesn’t know our logo and our reputation.”

The other crucial key to Huff & Puff’s success is the family atmosphere the Daniels have created for their employees.

“Bruce takes a great deal of responsibility to make sure that our people have their paychecks,” Melodie says. “There’s no doubt that’s very important and very personal to him. We remember running our truck in the early days with nothing in our billfold.”

“There were times I had to borrow $5 or $10 from a friend to get enough fuel to get home,” Bruce adds. “That’s not a good feeling. And I always remember that. I don’t want that ever happening to one of our people.”