Thanks, those differences from L. thoracica are obvious now. Looking at the Laphria descriptions, I'm betting this is L. virginica. Here is a quote from the description:
This species is easily recognizable by its stout form, medium size, and the contrasting solid yellow of its thoracic dorsum and solid black of its abdominal tergites. It ranges from 13-20 mm in length and is found in sandy locations along the Atlantic seabord. Supposedly it perfers to land on stumps of hard pines, such as pitch and short leaf.

Brimley, p. 338, lists it as Bombomima virginica, cites it from Raleigh, Charlotte (both Piedmont) April-June. (1) One of the more common Laphria in the NCSU Collection, with 18 pinned. Other common species are affinis, cinerea, flavicollis, grossus, safrana, sericea.
Giff Beaton has it on his Georgia Asilidae checklist page, and here is the image.
L. grossa is similar, but has yellow on the abdomen.

I'm pretty happy with L. virginica on mine and Troy's (middle above) photo.

The odd shadows are due to two light sources: sun from above/behind the fly and flash from the camera. The very dark shadows are under the fly where shadows from each source intersect. It did give an odd visual effect.

Patrick Coin
Durham, North Carolina

The two species L flavicollis and L virginica are very close visually. If you can see long yellow hairs on the forelegs better than I can then I do agree this is L virginica. None of these has ever been captured in Arkansas so I have not seen one in the wild or in hand by specimen. The gestalt is that it is different from L flavicollis which is the most common Laphria in Arkansas in spring. It is certainly not affinus or thoracica.