Word: menkes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Menk says railroads should get out of the railroad business," cried an ad in the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers this week. "Who does he think he is?" Who, indeed, but the president of the 14,000-mile Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. Louis Wilson Menk obviously had more on his mind than his catchy headlines seemed to say. "We're not in the railroad business," continued the ad. "We're in the distribution business. Mere semantics...
...sure is. In the eight months since Menk, 48, took over the 117-year-old Burlington, he has even shifted advertising agencies for the first time in 40 years, redesigned timetables (the covers now show a comely girl with an above-the-knee hem line), and started redecorating the line's 54-year-old headquarters in Chicago to discard what he calls the creaky "railroad look." Lou Menk has also reshuffled management, introduced a human-relations course that executives call "the charm school," figures that by emphasizing such small changes, he will get his employees to think seriously about...
...Chase Hobos. Menk is a railroader's son who began 30 years ago as a telegrapher, rose to head the Frisco line and become the most sought-after executive in the industry. He was recruited for the Burlington with a bigger job in mind: the railroad's stock is 97% owned by the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern and, in a merger that the ICC unexpectedly turned down last month, he was slated to become operating head of the three roads. With the merger outlook now cloudy, he is concentrating on bettering the Burlington. Among the measures...
...Menk got into railroading as a telegraph messenger when he was 19, be came president of the Frisco in 1962. By cutting back passenger service and automating freight yards, he raised earnings to an eight-year high of $7,123,356 last year - a performance that won him the attention of Burlington directors. In moving to the larger Burlington (8,546 miles of track v. the Frisco's 5,054), Menk measurably increases his challenge. Though the road's freight and passenger revenues rose last year, income fell $1,012,306 to $20.3 million, is down another...
...Like Menk, Gilliland looks to computers as a vital tool for further streamlining operations. The management itself is already streamlined. Frisco executives are young (average age: 45). Gilliland started as an office boy for the Santa Fe when he was only 14 and, despite five years of night school, never earned a college degree. These days most future Frisco executives come to the railroad straight out of college...