By D.R. STEWART World Staff Writer on Jun 29, 2012, at 2:01 AM Updated on 6/29/12 at 4:49 AM
Several hundred people attend an auction at Expo Square of trucks and trailers formerly operated by Arrow Trucking Co. on March 18, 2010, about three months after the company's collapse. Tulsa World file
Charles Hood said he decided to write a book about the demise of Arrow Trucking Co. after the idea was suggested by a banker who formerly did business with former Arrow CEO James Douglas Pielsticker.
The banker "introduced me to several players," Hood said. "I started talking to some of these people who had lost their jobs, but more than that, they had lost their self-esteem. It's a story I found very engaging. Every time I did an interview, I heard another unbelievable story."
Hood's book, "Big Rigs Posh Digs Fast Cars Dark Bars," is a thin, 107-page self-published account of Arrow's unraveling.
Sketchy on dates, sources and quotes, Hood reviews the rise of Arrow from a small company with a half-dozen trucks to a formidable 1,400-truck nationwide flatbed carrier under Pielsticker's father, Jim Pielsticker.
After the elder Pielsticker's death in a plane crash in 2001, his widow, Carol, appointed her son as CEO and the company began an eight-year descent into bankruptcy.
"Immediately after his father's death, the younger Pielsticker took the helm and almost instantaneously, the business began to take on water," Hood writes. "Bills previously paid, upon receipt, began to go unpaid for lengthy periods of time - if paid at all."
Hood details Pielsticker's penchant for expensive cars, motorcycles, airplanes and personal extravagances.
Arrow's lender, Transportation Alliance Bank of Ogden, Utah, denied Arrow further credit on Dec. 22, 2009. Arrow executives told employees to go home, closed company offices at 4230 S. Elwood Ave. and abandoned hundreds of trucks and drivers around the country without fuel or means to get home three days before Christmas.
Lawyers for Arrow filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Tulsa on Jan. 8, 2010.
The same day, the Utah bank filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Tulsa against Arrow and its top executives. TAB's lawsuit alleged the company submitted to the bank false invoices that defrauded the bank of at least $15.1 million, court documents said.
After Pielsticker filed a personal bankruptcy petition in February 2011, TAB won a $500,000 judgment against Arrow's former CEO in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas, where Pielsticker now resides.
"TAB's lawsuits, containing RICO (federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) and fraud charges, had been filed against Doug in an attempt to recover at least a large part of TAB's more than $15 million of lost loan monies," Hood writes. "The $500,000 settlement said they had not been very successful. The further tragedy was there were no charges filed against him for his destruction of the lives of the employees of the company he so willingly destroyed."
Hood said he did not interview Doug Pielsticker or Carol Pielsticker Bump while doing research for the book.
Doug Pielsticker said he has read the book but had no comment on it.
Area bookstores have sold "a couple hundred" copies of his book, Hood said.
"An audio version of the book is available," Hood said. "They tell me it has quite a trucker audience."
D.R. Stewart 918-581-8451
don.stewart@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Author pens take on Arrow demise
RELATED ITEMS
Complete coverage: Read the stories and view the documents related to the problems facing Arrow Trucking.
Transportation
As automakers race to make cheaper electric cars with greater battery range, General Motors is working on one that can go 200 miles per charge at a cost of about $30,000, a top company executive said Monday.
BNSF Railway Co. announced Monday it is spending $125 million to expand and improve its system in Oklahoma. Projects will include a new bypass connection at the Cherokee rail yard in west Tulsa and extending a siding area on the carrier's tracks near Mannford.
