Chris Perkins: Dolphins' Benito Jones keeps trucking -- off the field, too

Chris Perkins, South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Oct 24, 2025

Published in Football

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MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — If you see a Dolphins player drive up to Hard Rock Stadium in the cab of a yellow 18-wheeler, rest assured it’s fifth-year defensive tackle Benito Jones.

The 27-year-old Jones is a wide load at 6-foot-1 and a run-stuffing 335 pounds. But more importantly, you should know that Jones owns a trucking and logging company based in his hometown of Waynesboro, Miss.

“My rookie year, I just started buying trucks, doing contract hauling,” he said. “But now I’m contract logging. Now I’m going out there cutting trees and putting them in my truck and hauling them. I get paid for the logging and the trucking industry.”

Jones’ business, 7J Logging (Jones is the seventh child in his family), includes a fleet of 16 18-wheelers, three skidders, three loaders and a host of fuel tanks to keep them all gassed up. He employs 10 drivers.

“If the wood doesn’t get hauled, I can’t get paid,” the affable Jones said. “I think (two weeks ago) we hauled 128 loads.”

Apparently, that’s pretty good.

“Ain’t too many loggers doing that right now unless you’re a very, very big company,’ he said. “But me, I’m not a big logger. I’m just decent size. But I move a lot of volume.”

Jones has two trucks that he doesn’t allow anyone to drive. They’re Peterbilts.

“They’re like the Cadillac of the road,” Jones said.

They’re his personal trucks.

“I put a lot of money in them,” he said. “One of them I’m building is a show truck. I’m going to try to drive it to the stadium one game.”

That would be a sight worth seeing.

Jones has become one of my favorite Dolphins players. He’s a veteran, he’s a straight shooter, and he’s got a good sense of humor, three traits I like.

I always like to tell the stories of a team on and off the field, stories that tell you about a player without many, if any, stats. Jones, who played at Ole Miss, and is in his second stint with the Dolphins — he signed as an undrafted free agent in 2020 and then spent the 2022 and 2023 with Detroit before coming back to the Dolphins last season — is a good story.

Trucking is in Jones’ family. His dad did it. He has a brother that did it. Currently, one of his brothers drives for him. So does a sister, a brother-in-law and a few cousins. He also has an uncle working for him.

Jones said he started driving trucks with a standard transmission at 5 or 6 years old, in the hay field. I didn’t understand how that was possible.

“I wasn’t an average 5- or 6-year-old,” he said matter-of-factly. “I was pretty tall.”

Jones’ truck buying habit increased pretty quickly.

“I bought one, and I bought another, and bought another one and another one,” he said. “This year, I bought seven new trucks. We’re rockin’ and rollin’.”

Jones’ trucks go through 4,000 or 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel per week.

“I got a fuel terminal right there at my house,” he said. “They come in here, they pump fuel and keep going. It’s like a 24-hour service. I got my own gas station.”

He hates paying $25,000 to $30,000 a month for insurance.

“Insurance is a ripoff,” he said. “but you’ve got to have it doing this kind of work. Worker’s comp, all that stuff.

“Then you’ve got to work out people who want to sue you. When people know who you are, they’ll just want to swerve right in front of you. But all my trucks have got cameras on them.”

Jones can get alerts when a driver is using their phone. Jones gets an alert when a driver is using a handheld device. That allows Jones to be able to call the driver and tell him to focus on the road. Jones must be extra careful in his business.

“When you’re dealing with 18-wheelers,” he said of accidents, “the 18-wheeler is always at fault.”

Jones said after he retires he’ll probably give the business to his family.

“Logging, I love it,” he said, “but I might want to go travel in my truck.”

Some of the trucks have names. There’s Old Brown Sugar, which is a Mack truck. The blue Peterbilt is named Convict.

“And my yellow truck that I got coming, I think I’m probably going to name it ‘The World May Never Know,’ ” he said.

Why?

“You just never know what she’ll do,” he remarked. “You don’t know if she’ll run, you don’t know if she’ll pull, you just never know. The World May Never Know.”

With this being a Dolphins column, I guess I should say that Jones has totaled six tackles in six games for the NFL’s worst run defense. Whatever. Win or lose, you should know that there’s more to these players’ stories than stats. And you should know the back story when that yellow truck pulls up to Hard Rock Stadium.