Scott Smith, co-founder and CEO of PS Logistics, the Birmingham-based, one one of the largest and fastest-growing flatbed transportation and freight brokerage companies in North America, has been elected Chairman of the Board of the Alabama Trucking Association for the 2026–2027 term.
A native of Clay County, Ala., near Goodwater, Smith attended Auburn University, where he pursued a degree in what was then called Physical Distribution and Logistics, now a top-ranked transportation and logistics program and known as the Department of Supply Chain Management within the Harbert College of Business.
Smith’s trucking career began at Boyd Bros. Transportation, where he spent five and a half years starting in dispatch and load planning at the company’s headquarters in Clayton, Ala., before being promoted to terminal manager in Birmingham. He later joined the former Deaton Inc., one of Alabama’s most storied flatbed carriers, where he worked in operations alongside a young sales manager named Robbie Pike — a partnership that would soon change the course of both their careers.
When Deaton was sold to Western Express in 2002, Smith and Pike saw an opportunity. In 2004, at just 34 years old, Smith co-founded P&S Transportation (now PS Logistics) with Pike.
Neither man drew a salary for years, and Smith’s wife even returned to teaching full-time to support the family while the partners built the business. With only four full-time employees, Smith and Pike handled dispatch, load planning, customer relationships, and payroll themselves, growing the operation to more than 75 trucks even in those early years.
Central to that growth was a founding philosophy that set the new company apart: rather than chasing customers first, Smith and Pike bet on drivers. PS’s reputation as a driver-first company that prioritizes driver respect, fair treatment and flexibility. They built a reputation that attracted both talented drivers and, in turn, the customers who wanted them. That culture remains a foundation and among the reasons that the company has grown into a full logistics solution encompassing multiple operating divisions and a substantial non-asset brokerage, alongside its trucking roots.
Smith is known throughout the industry for his direct accessibility to his drivers with hands-on leadership style shapes major company decisions, from customer relationships to operational policy. He has long championed the idea that valuing drivers’ time and professionalism strengthens not just PS Logistics, but the trucking industry as a whole.
Beyond PS Logistics, Smith has been a longtime supporter of the Alabama Trucking Association and the ATA Comp Fund (Allied Interstate Risk), crediting those relationships with deepening his understanding of industry-wide collaboration and driver protection. In recent years, Smith has taken an increasingly active role in ATA leadership, engaging in advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C., and working closely with ATA leadership to advance industry priorities — including restoring professional standards among carriers, strengthening enforcement against unsafe and unqualified operators, and pursuing legal and tort reform on behalf of Alabama’s trucking industry.
Smith and Pike built PS Logistics on the belief that taking care of people — drivers, employees and customers alike — is the foundation of a successful, sustainable business. As Chairman, he brings that same philosophy to his leadership of the Alabama Trucking Association.
From transporting the essential goods that consumers and businesses need to thrive, to offering careers that support families and communities, Alabama Trucking drives our economy.
