NITL Executive of the Year Mike Haverty: Fortune favored the bold

The editorial staff of LM is pleased to again partner with the executive team at the National Industrial Transportation League (NITL) to present the Annual Executive of the Year Award, an honor that recognizes an individual for career achievement and game-changing leadership in the transportation industry.

With that, I’m proud to announce that the 2014 recipient of this coveted award is Michael Haverty, chairman emeritus of Kansas City Southern (KCS). The award will be presented on Wednesday, Nov. 19, at the NITL’s 107th Annual Meeting & TransComp Exhibition being held in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (Nov. 15-19).

For all of the years I’ve been part of this award process, I find it hard to remember another winner who fits the definition of “game-changer” better than Haverty.

A fourth generation railroader who began his career as a brakeman with the Missouri Pacific Railroad Co. in 1963, he made his climb up the corporate ladder at a time when customer service requirements were becoming more stringent, operating costs were being squeezed tighter than ever, and the ivy-like spread of global commerce was gaining momentum.

A quick read down a list of just a few of his accomplishments neatly summarizes his nomination. In the early 1990s, when Haverty served as president and chief operating officer on the Santa Fe, he helped to implement the first reduced train crew, a precedent-setting move for improved labor productivity throughout the entire rail industry. And in a legendary handshake deal aboard a train,

Haverty and the late J.B. Hunt formed their historic intermodal partnership, marking the first time a Class I railroad went into business with a truckload carrier.

“Sitting across from him, you get a sense that this thoughtful, determined innovator simply believes he was at the right place at the right time,” says Executive Editor Patrick Burnson, whose portrait of Haverty begins on page 26. “Based on a fundamental understanding of the rail business, coupled with a feel for the potential role rail could play in trade with Mexico, Haverty made some logical, yet bold bets—and they paid off.”

In fact, many believe that those bets on intermodal transportation and the development of cross-border trade were nothing short of transformational. “Having anticipated the near-shoring trend is another part of his vision,” Tony Hatch, rail analyst and principal of ABH Consulting, tells Burnson. “Haverty represents the critical lynchpin of intermodalism and its hemispheric influences, while the deals he made with regional rail companies in the U.S. and Mexico were of historic proportions.”

But if he could boil his extraordinary career down, Haverty believes that most of what he accomplished can be credited to logic. “It made perfect sense to drive a deal with truckers to share economies of scale,” he says. “Then, when it came to penetrating new markets, Mexico seemed like the best fit. I may have been regarded as a ‘Kansas hillbilly,’ but I got lucky, I guess.”

According to Bruce Carlton, president of the NITL, Haverty may consider himself lucky, but that type of good fortune only befalls those who are determined to make a change—and make a difference.

“Haverty is in a small club of outstanding industrialists who have started at the bottom and made it to the top on abilities, hard work, and dedication to the job. His story should be inspiration to us all,” says Carlton.