Comeback for Mack

To most Americans, the phrase "built like a Mack truck" conveys a feeling of strength and solidity. Founded by three machinist-blacksmiths and wagonmakers in 1900, Mack Trucks, Inc. made the first gas-driven bus (for sightseeing in Brooklyn's Prospect Park), the first motor-driven hook & ladder. Mack soon became the leader in the heavy truck industry; year after year its earnings were good, its dividends fat. But in 1949 the oldest truckmaker in the U.S. no longer seemed to be built like a Mack. Sales were well down from 1947's peacetime peak of $124 million, and the peak profits of $8.2 million had turned into a $3.9 million deficit.

Mack's directors knew one way out: change the management. Out of the presidency went Charles T. Ruhf, a 40-year Mack employee and president since 1943. In as $100,000-a-year president and chairman went Edwin Dagobert Bransome, 57, a Mack director and a rough & ready executive who had put one other wobbly company back on its feet. Last week President Bransome proved that the name Mack was again synonymous with strength. In 1950, he reported, Mack's sales jumped nearly 50% to $123 million, its net to $1.3 million.

Simple Formula. Bransome's formula was simple: "First find out what's wrong, then correct it." He found plenty to correct. Advertising was virtually nonexistent. The company's purchasing, run by four men, was spread all over the lot. So was its production: no less than 72 different models were coming off Mack's Allentown, Pa. assembly lines. There was little coordination between sales and production divisions, and no information on the day-to-day operations of the company. Said Bransome: "By the time sales figures got to me, they were months old."

Some of Mack's management were shuffled upstairs, and Bransome brought in three new top executives: H. William Dodge, ex-boss of sales for the Texas Co., as executive vice president; Sigmund S. Stewart, formerly purchaser for the Air Reduction Co., Inc., as purchasing head; and A. R. Kelso, president of Farmingdale Corp. (airplane parts), as production chief. To cut production costs, Bransome enlarged Mack's engine plant at Plainfield, N.J., moved its transmission and gear production there from nearby New Brunswick.

He cut the number of truck models to 29 (ranging from a 17,000-lb. short-haul truck for $3,000 to a 75,000-lb. off -highway goliath); he reduced the number of different parts by 25%. He centralized purchasing, doubled the advertising budget, jacked up the sales divisions.

No Supermen. Bransome, a graduate of Ursinus College (1912), got his start in business as a Philadelphia construction man, took on "any job that came along"--including repairing Delaware River bulkheads between tides. An early aviator (1912), he flew for the Navy in World War I. At 26 he joined General Motors' export division as a trainee, was made head of the division in a year. His reason: "The guys who were teaching me were even dumber than I was." He soon switched to a top post at Wilson Welder & Metals Co., Inc., where he pioneered in the infant electric welding system. In early New Deal days, Bransome headed the rubber division of NRA. Says he: "I worked under old 'Ironpants' Johnson. I didn't know one thing about rubber and told NRA that, but they said: 'Then you're just the man we want.'"

In 1935 he moved in as president of Vanadium Corp. of America, reorganized its mining operations, and helped supply the uranium ore for the first atom bomb experiments. In World War II, Bransome went back to Washington as an industry representative in labor troubles, before the War Labor Board was set up.

When asked how he put Mack Trucks back on its feet, Bransome calls in his five top men, points to them and says: "There's your answer." He adds: "We're not supermen doing a superman's job, you know. We just apply common sense."

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