The recent departures from Pilot Flying J, the billion-dollar truck-stop company owned and run by Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, included the man who provided some profane and colorful quotes that were captured by an informant who made extensive recordings prior to the April 15, 2013 federal raid on the company.
According to the Knoxville News-Sentinel, the company has fired V.P. of National Sales John Freeman.
“Hey this is a game,” Freeman allegedly said while being secretly recorded, according to the affidavit submitted in connection with the search warrant issued last April. “We’re playin’ f–kin’ poker with funny money, and it’s liar’s poker with funny money because of all this cost-plus stuff. So, you know, I’m not, I don’t want to get into a moral or ethical conversation, because I believe that if a guy’s gonna butt-f–k you then we got to go to butt-f–kin’ him harder. . . . Some people are tits and some people ass guys and some people want their discount managed through the system and some people like a big check. I mean, f–k, sell it to ‘em the way they want to buy. And understand, the f–ker’s got the ability to know what the hell you’re doing to ‘em. Okay?”
Those quotes allegedly refer to the practice of preying on unsophisticated customers by shortchanging them on rebates to which they were entitled.
The implications of Freeman’s firing aren’t clear. Last week, Pilot Flying J lawyer Aubrey Harwell cautioned against drawing conclusions from the departure of company president Mark Hazelwood. So we won’t, even if the conclusion potentially drawn is that the company fired Freeman in part because the company is confident that there’s nothing Freeman can say in court that could be used to prosecute or convict Haslam.