Rescue Man

At 49, Charles W. ("Chuck") Perelle, who made his name & fame as an eradicator of production bugs, has had enough careers to last several men a lifetime. He rose from a painter's helper at Boeing to production boss of its Seattle plant, ran Consolidated Vultee's World War II production and, later, Howard Hughes's aircraft plant, then took on the presidency of Detroit's money-losing Gar Wood Industries, Inc. Three years ago, after Gar Wood was in the black, Perelle took on his toughest challenge. He became president of Philadelphia's money-losing ACF-Brill Co., which makes buses.

Undertaker Needed. Business was so bad that the plant was about to be shut down; in Perelle's first year, Brill lost $2.1 million. "All the place needed," says Perelle, a cocky bantam (5 ft. 6 in.) who never hesitates to crow over his own accomplishments, "was an undertaker." Perelle quickly found out what was wrong. For one thing, Brill did not even have an assembly line. Buses were built in one spot, had to be lifted over incompleted ones when finished.

Perelle spent $10,000 to put in an assembly line, and another $150 for a winch to pull it. Where Brill once used 2,300 men, on three shifts, to build ten buses, 700 men now turn out the same number in a single eight-hour shift. In 1950 Perelle cut the losses to $124,000, and rearmament brought along some $25 million in Government orders for buses and in subcontracts. Last week Perelle proudly reported that in 1951 Brill's sales rose 88%, to $23.6 million, and the company turned in a profit of $2.5 million after taxes, the biggest ever, and kept rising in 1952's first quarter.

Perelle, Alaska-born son of an Italian miner and a Finnish mother, had to go into the financing business to turn in such a record. One of his big problems: although many bus companies needed new buses, few of them had enough money to pay in full. So Perelle, to spark his sales, has taken on a total of $4,000,000 worth of bus company "paper." It averages 4 1/4% interest, and Perelle regards it as a safe investment, but it ties up money that he would prefer to put into modernizing Brill's plant.

Sturdy Baby. As a result of the "easy credit policy," Brill's share of city bus business is edging up. When Perelle took over, Brill made 414 buses, or 7.8% of the industry's total. Last year it made 1,122, or 11.7%.

Wall Street's Financier Charles E. Allen, who bought Brill from Victor Emanuel's Avco Corp. a year ago and added it to his growing collection of U.S. companies (Colorado Fuel & Iron, American Bosch), likes Perelle's methods so well that he gives him a free hand. They both realize that the big Government orders make Brill, to some extent, a war baby. But Perelle hopes to have Brill strong enough, when rearmament is over, to stand on its own feet.

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