Former Alabama Trucking Association Chairman Chris Cooper to serve as interim president after Colson’s departure to lead national group

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October 28, 2026

The Alabama Trucking Association’s board of directors voted unanimously to name Chris Cooper interim president, effective December 1.

Cooper has served as CEO of Boyd Bros. Transportation, a past chairman of the association’s board, and now, the current president of the Alabama Trucking Foundation.

The vote follows the American Trucking Associations’ exciting selection of Mark Colson, Alabama Trucking’s president and CEO since 2019, as its next president and CEO.

Colson takes the national post December 1 and will be the tenth person to hold the job since the organization was founded in 1933. He will lead Alabama Trucking through the end of November and assist with the transition afterward.

Cooper will serve as interim president while the board sets a long-term plan for filling the vacancy. The association said no decisions have been made on that process or its timeline.

Cooper is the third generation of his family to chair the association. His grandfather, Dempsey Boyd, founded Boyd Bros. with his brothers in Clayton, hauling steel and building materials on a small fleet of flatbeds, and later chaired the Alabama Trucking board. His mother, Gail Cooper, ran the company for years and became the first woman to lead the board. Cooper became the association’s first third-generation chairman in 2022.

Cooper’s first job at Boyd’s Clayton headquarters was washing trucks and trailers. He studied accounting at Auburn University and earned an MBA from the University of Alabama. He went on to lead Boyd Companies, guiding the carrier through its 2013 merger with Daseke and joining the Daseke board.

As chairman, Cooper made workforce development and professional drivers the focus of his term. He championed the Real Faces of Alabama Trucking campaign, which highlighted the men and women behind the wheel rather than the equipment they drive.

The Alabama Trucking Foundation, which Cooper leads, supports highway safety, workforce development and the industry’s public image.

More than 125,000 Alabamians work in the state’s trucking industry.

Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.