RAILROADER: The Unfiltered Genius and Controversy of Four-Time CEO Hunter Harrison

The problem, McLean decided, was the maritime mindset: Pan-Atlantic’s staff, experienced in the slow-moving ways of the maritime industry, did not know how to sell to an industrial traffic manager who cared not about ships, but about getting freight to the customer on schedule at low cost. McLean brought in a team of aggressive young trucking execu

Harriman was a truly remarkable man, one of the most brilliant railroaders and formidable capitalists in American history, whose genius has been somewhat masked behind a partially deserved reputation for shady dealing.

To the very end, Jim Hill unfailingly applied his lifelong philosophy, by these and many other such applications, of plowing earnings back into improved infrastructure.

Malcom McLean sold his stock and quietly left the board of R. J. Reynolds Industries in February 1977. By all accounts, the marriage had not been a happy one. McLean was frustrated by the tobacco giant’s bureaucracy and bewildered by its repeated changes of strategy. Most of all, though, he was restless. “I am a builder, and they are runners,” McLe