IT IS one of America’s biggest family firms, with revenues last year of more than $30 billion. Yet unlike peers such as Mars, a maker of confectionery, Pilot Flying J is all but unknown overseas. And it is more reclusive than other private family groups such as, say, Koch Industries, a conglomerate headed by Charles and David Koch.
Pilot Flying J’s business, operating filling stations on America’s highways, focuses mainly on a narrow group of customers: lorry drivers. It has little need to make itself known except among those knights of the road. Furthermore, the company has been recovering from the biggest scandal in its history, making it more taciturn than ever.
In 2013 the FBI raided its headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee. An affidavit unsealed by a federal judge accused individuals at the firm of running a scheme for at least five years to swindle small haulage firms out of millions of dollars in rebates on purchases of fuel. (For small firms, discounts were calculated manually, which facilitated the cheating.) According to the affidavit, an informant told the FBI that Jimmy Haslam, Pilot Flying J’s chief executive, knew about...Continue reading
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