Young Tom Evans

The cash-heavy, car-hungry U.S. railroads have been on a buying spree; in three days last week they ordered 1,800 cars. But the big surprise was that the bulk of the orders went not to the moss-backed mastodons which have dominated the field for a generation, but to a young outsider, the bustling Mount Vernon Car Manufacturing Co. of Mt. Vernon, Ill.

This was no surprise to Mt. Vernon's new boss, Thomas Mellon Evans.* Tom Evans, just turned 33, slick-haired, aggressive, plunked himself into the president's chair a fortnight ago and calmly announced that he was out to carve himself a rich slice of the rail car business. He did not seem to care if it came right out of the venerable Big Four--Pullman, American Car, General American and Pressed Steel. His $3,000,000 order from the Southern Railway for 1,000 freight cars was proof he meant business.

Buy Low. Tom Evans graduated from Yale into the depression in 1931. He was glad to get a lowly clerk's job with the Mellon-controlled Gulf Oil Corp. But that was as far as the Mellon help went. With only some fatherly advice from Gulf's Board Chairman, W. L. Mellon, Tom Evans made his way alone. For six years he saved money, like an Alger hero; and played the stockmarket, unlike an Alger hero. Thus he collected $10,000. He wanted to find and buy a family-owned business that had gone to pot. In the down-at-the-heels H. K. Porter Co., in Pittsburgh's slummy Lawrenceville section, he found it. Once a No. 1 builder of industrial locomotives, Porter Co. was down to 40 workers.

Tom Evans bought up Porter bonds at 10 to 15 cents on the dollar, reorganized the company under 77B, and became president at 28. He thought he knew the company's trouble: "You can't live on locomotives, because they never seem to wear out." And there was little demand for a longtime Porter mainstay, a fireless locomotive that ran on stored steam. So he started to make things that did wear out, pressure vessels, evaporators, etc., for the chemical, food and oil industries. But when the war boom hit, he hastily revised his ideas about locomotives.

Orders poured in from munitions plants for the fireless engine.

Branch Out. He spread to small Blairsville (pop. 5,002), bought up the only industry in town--it was shut down --got the Navy to equip the plant, and began to turn out heavy-caliber shells. He kept on scouting U.S. industry for more bargains, bought the Quimby Pump Co., whose Newark and New Brunswick (N.J.) plants had a sizable backlog of Navy and Maritime Commission orders. To get further diversification he set up a new division of the Porter Co. and plunged into the gas & oil business. Although still on an experimental basis, he grossed a tidy $250,000 last year from wells in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kansas.

After this, Tom Evans marked time for almost nine months, although he had his eye on the Mt. Vernon Co., long owned by a family trust. Tom Evans heard that the heirs wanted to get their cash out. Fortnight ago, he took the biggest jump of all by buying it (assets $10,000,000) and its subsidiary, J. P. Devine Co. (chemical processing equipment). By this deal, the Porter Co. shouldered into the car-building business. In one move, Tom Evans got 10% of the nation's freight-car-making facilities, and became the biggest U.S. manufacturer of certain types of process equipment--i.e., condensers.

Cash In. With all this bargain buying, the Porter Co., which grossed $9,000,000 last year, will probably quadruple its gross this year to around $35,000,000, will net upward of $1,000,000. But Tom Evans looks to the postwar world to provide the real windfall. With the railroads already talking about spending $1,000,000,000 a year in the first postwar years, he sees no reason why there should not be a market for 100,000 cars a year for at least five years. And with his sleeves already rolled for battle, he confidently predicted: "Our share is 10% but we'll get more."

* A first cousin twice removed of the late famed Andrew Mellon. Thomas Mellon Evans is named for his father who in turn was named for the founder of the Mellon dynasty, the late Judge Thomas Mellon, father of Andrew.

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