Capitol Words a project of the Sunlight Foundation

Rep. Bill Shuster

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise today to recognize Mr. Donald Schneider, a pioneer who transformed the transportation industry as we know it. I am pleased to have the opportunity to call attention to his service and his remarkable story of American entrepreneurship and ingenuity.

Mr. Schneider, chairman emeritus and former president of Schneider National, Inc., ran one of the nation's largest truckload carriers with nearly 12,500 tractors and 35,000 trailers, all painted in a distinct shade of orange. You may have seen his trucks driving down our great national highways, hauling goods from coast to coast. Behind these trucks was a stellar businessman who leveraged new technologies and innovations to grow his company into one of the most successful, recognizable, and respected transportation and logistics companies in North America. In the process, an industry was transformed and millions of Americans benefited from his life's work without them even realizing.

Mr. Schneider was a hard working man who began as a mechanic's assistant and truck driver at the age of 18. He graduated from St. Norbert College with an undergraduate degree in business and married his wife Pat in 1957. After serving a 13 month military tour of duty in Korea, Schneider graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School, then began to work in his father's trucking business in 1961, fusing his passion for trucking with a keen business sense.

Over the next three decades, Mr. Schneider expanded his fleet substantially, using modern management techniques and acquisition of regional trucking companies to grow his business. Under Mr. Schneider's leadership, Schneider National was one of only a few pre-deregulation truckload carriers that survived and flourished after the Motor Carrier Act of 1980.

Later in that same decade, his company even began to install satellite communication in trucks. By allowing companies to track their trucks in real time, consumers benefitted from faster package deliveries and just-in-time inventory management.

His company's entrance into the logistics business in 1993 heralded a new frontier in trucking by enhancing the ability of companies to manage time-sensitive deliveries and inventories. Meanwhile, his use of standard-sized trailers that could run over the road and ride on railroad flatcars--known as intermodal transportation--established partnerships with the railroads and was followed by all others in the industry.

Now, it is unimaginable how the trucking industry ever fared without Mr. Schneider's visionary ways.

Though Mr. Schneider was a great man, he never lost his common touch. He insisted on being called by his first name, and was a community philanthropist who was active in several charities. In a 1997 interview, he was quoted as saying, ``My job is important, but it's no more important than the driver or the people in the service center.''

Mr. Schneider was a man who had a true servant's heart, and America has been enriched by his service to this country. His entrepreneurial spirit will endure not only in his company's orange trucks and trailers, but in the homes of countless Americans who have benefitted from his innovations. I invite the American people to join me in celebrating his life.