Strength on the Highway

In the rough and tumble competition of the trucking industry, Trucker Richard R. Riss knows that strong companies tend to get stronger and weak ones to die. Says he: "We've got to keep getting stronger." Trucker Riss is already pretty strong. His Riss & Co., Inc. is one of the world's longest trucking lines (37,000 miles of routes between Denver and the East Coast), the best moneymaker in the business (1953 net before taxes: $2,882,919), and the fifth largest in terms of total operating revenues ($29,114,678). Last week Riss made his bid to become stronger than ever. He began to take delivery on one of the largest private-equipment orders in the history of trucking--$14 million worth of tractors and trailers from General Motors, Fruehauf Trailer and Strick Co.

With his new fleet he plans to step up schedules on his company's routes, reducing shipping time by as much as 50% on some long hauls. Specially designed by engineers from his own company and G.M., his 500 new tractors were built for two-man driving teams. They have comfortable sleeping units and other features suggested by a Harvard University study on driver fatigue and safety (e.g., shaded windshields, adjustable seats to prevent tiring). Of his 1,400 new trailers, 400 are mechanically refrigerated.

Baseball to Bananas. Since the trucking business was down in the first half of this year, the big truck order is a gamble. But Riss, an old poker-playing crony of Harry Truman, has had a long career of cashing in on his gambles. He got into trucking by way of semi-pro baseball. On the strength of a flashy tryout for a team at Colorado Springs, he was touted as a new sensation.

But he made nine errors in three innings in his first game, feigned a leg injury to get off the field. The disgusted manager of the team, whose father was a produce dealer, waived Riss to him. He put Riss to work selling a carload of ripe bananas before they spoiled. Riss not only turned in a profit but in a few months was in his own produce business, with a truck and a debt of $1,060. When he made back the $1,060 in 25 days by hauling fruit from orchards and farms, the town's leading produce dealer advised him to pay off the debt. Replied Riss: "No, sir. I'm going to expand and go into competition with you." When he was 27, Riss had accumulated enough capital to put $40,000 into the trucking business. He lost $50,000 the first year. The next year he earned $55.000.

By 1935, when the Interstate Commerce Commission stepped in to certify routes for the fast-growing industry, Riss had lines running from Texas to Illinois.

With all his debts paid off and profits rolling in, Riss made $99,000 in 1939. But when the arms program started, he went back into debt to expand, lost $400,000 in 1941 and 1942. Before the war ended, he was in the black again to stay.

Big to Bigger. Riss & Co. now operates in 22 states and owns 27 truck terminals, nine of them built since the war. With its new equipment, it will have 1,650 trailers and 625 tractors. Boston operations are run from the largest privately owned terminal in the world. The Cleveland terminal sprawls over 50 acres. The freight house at the company's Kansas City headquarters, built five years ago to allow for future growth is already outgrown. On such heavily traveled routes as the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a Riss truck passes on the average of once every twelve minutes, day and night. Riss himself likes to escape from his business by hopping into his DC-3 and running up to his $200,000 luxury lodge at Sioux Lookout, Ont. He leaves Riss & Co. in the hands of his son Robert, who at 27 is president of the company and day-to-day operating boss.

Dick Riss has an unlimited faith in the future of trucking, because the population of the U.S. is increasing by 7,000 every day, and railroads are not expanding to meet the growing needs. Says he: "We've just begun to grow."

In San Francisco last week, another big trucker was growing bigger. With ICC approval, Pacific Intermountain Express, whose $22 million volume in 1953 made it the West Coast's biggest trucker (ninth in the nation), wound up a deal to combine forces with Los Angeles' $18 million West Coast Fast Freight, Inc. Pacific Intermountain, which has just ordered $4,000,000 worth of new equipment, will pay Fast Freight's owners $3,270,000 and 60,000 shares of Pacific Intermountain stock, will then have a combined fleet of 2,642 tractors and trailers serving 25,000 Western and Midwestern towns. Combined business: $40 million annually, second biggest in the U.S., behind Manhattan's $44 million Associated Transport Inc.

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