A former Jack Cooper driver has dealt with his recent job loss by starting a car-hauling business of his very own.
46-year-old McKinley Archie lost his six figure job of 20 years very early in 2025 when Ford Motor Co. and General Motors both announced they were cutting their long-time ties with trucking company Jack Cooper.
“It wasn’t McDonald’s wage jobs — those were good jobs,” Archie said.
By the time he lost his job, Archie had worked his way up from truck driver to steward, and new he had to find a new way to make money for his family.
“As the steward, my coworkers looked to me for leadership and guidance, so I had to be strong for them on the outside. But internally, I didn’t know what I was going to do either,” Archie said to Detriot Free Press. “Then when I saw my mom she said, ‘What’s wrong? Your face looks heavy?’ I broke a couple tears and said, ‘I don’t know if I’ll have a job.’ She reminded me that I’m a child of God. He will take care of me. She said to suck it up, keep moving and it will all work out.”
By February, Archie gathered together his group of close friends that had already started a bourbon business and a home renovation business together, and decided to find a way to move forward with their collective experience.
“We’ve been doing business for years, and we sat down and had a roundtable on how we can mitigate these losses,” Archie said. “We decided to launch into the car hauling business.”
The group has since launched Squirrelly LLC, a trucking company out of Stone Mountain, Georgia, “because we are all over the place. That’s our slogan,” Archie said. Archie acts as the company’s cofounder and chief compliance officer, and runs the business alongside two other men and one woman. The company’s goal is to get a contract hauling Ford vehicles from the Kentucky Truck Plant to dealerships across the country.
Archie said the company first leased some trucks to get started, but has since purchased 10, and is scheduled to buy 25 more.
“We had go into my backyard and dig up all my savings. It’s hard to go even to a bank and say give me $3 million to start a dream. Now that we’re actually moving cars, maybe we can go back to them and show them proof of concept. But we bootstrapped all of it,” Archie explained.
So far, the company has moved 27 loads of Ford vehicles from Kentucky, to Texas and Michigan.
“It’s a great start for us,” Archie said. “Of course, we want to get to the point where we’re moving 36 loads a day or better. Once we get our own inventory straight from the (automakers), that’ll be better.”
Squirrelly has since joined the Teamsters union, allowing them to transport any overflow auto loads from other car transport companies. Squirrelly currently employs 10 former Jack Cooper employees and six other employees.
“My goal is get most of those (former Jack Cooper drivers) back to work. Cassens Transport took a few of them,” he said. “We’re the new kid on the block.”
“It’s a lot of pride to me personally to help my fellow brothers get back to work,” Archie said. “I just thank God that He put me in a position to be able to do it. When it was happening and we were losing our jobs, I thought, ‘I’ll be all right because I’ll start my own car hauling company.’ Four months later here we are actually moving vehicles.”
