R.J. Corman

Fortune magazine features railroad man Richard Jay Corman:

Corman came from a farm family, which included a grandfather who did odd jobs hauling goods and took Rick in as a 25% partner when he was only 11. A few years later, high school utterly bored him. He got married in September of his senior year and, when she didn't turn out to be pregnant after all, they got divorced. Totally impatient with schooling, Corman missed 105 days out of a scheduled 175 during the 1973 school year but managed to graduate.
Having devoted his days playing hooky to learning the excavation trade from an uncle, Rick rented a backhoe and a dump truck and set out to do whatever jobs he could pick up. The dump truck was red, and that became his color. "You can't be good if you don't look good," he says.
He edged into railroad work, rebuilding crossings and driving grueling distances to wherever the job was, sometimes sleeping in his truck and regularly braving terrible weather. "Railroads don't care -- well, they really can't care -- what the weather's like when something needs fixing," he says. Workers who couldn't take the punishment left. Corman kept making himself the model for doing things right. A "go-getter" by the description of many, including even himself, he steadily picked up construction jobs and gained a reputation for fast, expert service. It also helped that most people simply liked him, sensing his innate intelligence, quickly learning that he was totally honest, enjoying his openness and humor and boisterous, cackling laugh.
In business, Corman was opportunistic. A Columbus company to which the rail industry outsourced some of its derailment business quit the city, and Corman was asked by railroad friends to step into the void. He did, accepting the need to acquire heavy, expensive equipment -- machines that will lift a derailed car, for example, so that the rails beneath it can be repaired or replaced. That naturally led to "crisis" work. "He's kind of like an oilfield firefighter," says Matt Rose, CEO of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, of his friend Corman. "He's the Red Adair of the railroad industry." But Corman also has a hand in more prosaic businesses, such as selling rails and ties to railroads. In effect, he takes on inventory costs they'd just as soon not bear.