Kent Powell Dies: The Man Who Conceived HDT – Fleet Administration
Within the ’60s, journalist and editor Kent Powell took over administration of a struggling regional publication, and reworked it into an award-winning journal with a nationwide attain. His imaginative and prescient stood the check of time, and continues in the present day as Heavy Responsibility Trucking and truckinginfo.com. (Pictured: Clippings from Powell’s time at Seattle Instances, Kent Powell, the primary problem of HDT, and a wall of Neal journalism awards received by HDT’s employees.)
Supply: Andrea Powell
Kent Powell, the person who conceived Heavy Responsibility Trucking journal, died on Aug. 27 in his house in Southern California. He was 93.
Powell was a Seattle Instances journalist within the Sixties when Western Trucking, a small regional publication, was struggling. He was employed to handle it, and by 1968, he took the publication nationwide with a brand new identify (Heavy Responsibility Trucking), a brand new circulation standards based mostly on that identify, and a contemporary editorial philosophy.
A key component of Powell’s enlargement plan was subscriber qualification. To obtain HDT the subscriber have to be concerned in managing at the very least one heavy-duty truck (rated 26,000 kilos or extra gross automobile weight). The reasoning: These readers had been the individuals who specified the numerous elements on heavy vehicles. No different publication used that standards on the time.
“Powell most popular to keep away from the highlight,
however was the ability behind all of it.”
Powell constructed on his new method over a number of years and it labored. Rivals within the East and Midwest first referred to HDT as “that cute little e book out West.” However the journal started beating the competitors with main editorial breaks and options. Readership boomed, and it grew to become the business chief in promoting pages.
A lot of that success was as a result of Powell’s skills to draw top-notch expertise, from promoting gross sales and advertising and marketing professionals to inside employees, to editors who set business information in journalism prizes.
HDT’s success led to creation of latest advertising and marketing and editorial merchandise together with truck cease posters, a truck magnificence pageant, and publications like Truckers Information, Roadstar and Truck Gross sales & Leasing — all underneath the company banner of Newport Communications Group. Bobit Enterprise Media acquired Heavy Responsibility Trucking from Newport Enterprise Media in 2012.
Powell most popular to keep away from the highlight, however was the ability behind all of it. He was an icon with a expertise to achieve enterprise, and had a deep understanding of fine journalism. However he’ll probably be remembered by most for his humorousness and fast wit, mates of Powell wrote in his obituary.
Private Life
Powell was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1929. He’s survived by his daughter Andrea, six grandchildren and two nice grandchildren, and was preceded in loss of life by his son Curtis (2021) and spouse Patricia (1951). He met his spouse at Roosevelt Excessive Faculty they usually had been married for almost 67 years.
Extra about Kent Powell’s life. He:
- Attended the College of Washington.
- Served within the U.S. Military Nationwide Guard from 1952 to 1959 as a Sargent.
- Began his journalism profession working for the Seattle Instances on the age of 14 as a “copy boy.” He labored his method as much as masking sports activities, specializing in horse racing.
- Moved to Orange County, California, in 1963 as writer of what’s now HDT.
- Served as a Board Member of the Bowers Museum in Orange County.
