bigpicture
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Columnists:
Clifford F. Lynch
Don Jacobson
Shelly Safian
Kenneth B. Ackerman
Art Van Bodegraven
Barry Brandman
A visionary remembered
Gary Master
Publisher
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Group Editorial Director
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Jim Indelicato
Group Publisher
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THE FIRST TIME I BECAME AWARE OF THE RESPECT DON
Schneider had in the logistics profession was when I was assigned to
cover his session at a Council of Logistics Management annual conference. I was on time for the session but could not get in: The audience
filled every chair and spilled out the door. This was in the late 1980s, less
than a decade after the trucking industry was deregulated and the company he ran, Schneider National, had rapidly grown into one of the most
successful trucking businesses in the nation.
So it was for the remainder of his career. Don Schneider was about the
nearest thing the transportation industry had to a superstar, although the
ever self-effacing Schneider would have dismissed any such characterization. He was an astute executive and a business visionary. Early on, he saw the potential for deregulation to
allow the trucking industry to reinvent itself, for technology to transform the way it did business, and for
carriers and customers to work together. For just one
instance, his early embrace of satellite-based communications technology, considered by many to be foolhardy
at the time, helped launch a revolution in the industry.
And yet he remained a man of great humility. I had
the opportunity to interview him many times before
his retirement, and he would always rebuff any effort
to make the story about him. It was about his drivers,
his managers, and those around him. It was about the
trucking industry he loved. It was never about Don
Schneider.
I once met him at his office in Green Bay, Wis., and was surprised at
just how modest that office was. It seemed the trappings of success meant
little to him. My sharpest recollection of that visit was sitting in on his
remarks to a group of new drivers, welcoming them to the company.
There was nothing perfunctory about it: Those drivers were important to
him, as were all the other employees he greeted throughout the day.
For Schneider, trucking and logistics were about far more than moving
goods from one point to another. I had a number of conversations with
him over the years, and they often veered away from the topic at hand
toward his passionately held view that an efficient transportation system
was essential to our prosperity. He believed that transportation and logistics formed the links in the economy that allowed businesses to thrive to
the benefit of us all. He believed that the trucking industry—and by
extension, the entire transportation industry—was doing great good. I
always left those conversations persuaded that Don Schneider was not
just a talented executive but an extraordinary man.
