Mike Haverty

Michael R. Haverty (born June 11, 1944), aka Mike Haverty, is a fourth generation railroader. He is a graduate of the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, where he was a Varsity football player. He received his Masters of Business Administration from The University of Chicago. He began his railroad career in 1963 on his 19th birthday as brakeman/switchman of the Missouri Pacific Railroad in his hometown of Atchison, Kansas. He completed that company's management training program in 1967. In 1970, Haverty took a job with The Santa Fe Railway where he worked his way up through the ranks and was eventually elected Sante Fe's President and Chief Operating Officer in 1989. While he served as President, Santa Fe was one of the premier intermodal carriers in the United States. He completed a historical alliance with J.B. Hunt Transport out of Arkansas. The first such relationship of its kind between a railroad and a truck carrier that took place through a handshake deal between Mike Haverty and J.B. Hunt. Today BNSF (Burlington Northern & Santa Fe) still continues to reap the benefits of that deal. He served as Santa Fe's President and COO until 1991, when he resigned and decided to go the entrepreneurial route and formed Haverty Corp, a private transportation business.

During his tenure at Santa Fe, and later as a transportation consultant, Haverty had been for years intrigued by KCSR. He sensed a gradual change in North American freight logistics and suspected that KCSR was uniquely positioned to play an important role in an emerging new shipping environment. The formation of The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 solidified this view in Haverty's mind. So when visited in February 1995 by KCSI's Chairman of The Board Paul Henson and offered the opportunity to head KCSR, he was inclined to accept their offer but only with the understanding that KCSI would attempt to expand its rail operations. Haverty was assured that his desires conformed with the KCSI's intentions, he joined the company and was named KCSR's President and Chief Executive Officer as well as Executive Vice President of KCSI on May 15, 1995. He and Landon Rowland, KCSI's President and Chief Executive Officer, immediately began to put into action a plan to expand the company's railroad network through a continuation of acquisitions, investments and strategic alliances.

He was the seventeenth CEO of the Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS). Prior to working for KCS, he had been an executive for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. At Santa Fe, he had been responsible for the return of the famous red-and-silver "warbonnet" paint scheme in 1989; at KCS, he was similarly responsible for the revival of the passenger-era red-and-black "Southern Belle" paint scheme, applied to the business train, new ES44ACs and SD70ACes, and several new classes of covered hoppers and coil cars.

He was inducted into the Railroad Hall of Fame alongside the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Cyrus K. Holliday, J.P. Morgan and others. He is the first living individual to be inducted into the Railroad Hall of Fame.

In 2001 he was named Railroader of the Year by the leading North American railroad industry publication Railway Age Magazine.^[1] In 2014, the Freight House Bridge was renamed the "Michael R. Haverty Freight House Bridge" in his honor.^[2]

See also

• List of railroad executives

References