PLEASE USE THE LINKS BELOW TO BROWSE CLASS NOTES BY YEAR...
1930-39 | 1940-49 | 1950-59 | 1960-69 | 1970-79 | 1980-89 | 1990-93 | 1994-96 | 1997-99 | XP-IXP
Call David Yeager a travel agent of the trucking industry. Just like last-minute travelers looking for airline seats, manufacturers and wholesalers often are scrambling for quick ways to ship goods by rail or truck. That’s where Yeager steps in. His intermodal transportation company, Hub Group Inc., acts as the intermediary between companies that need to transport products and rail and trucking lines that need full loads.
“We are the travel agent for the freight business,” explained Yeager, XP-57 (’88). “We own very few trucks and no trains. Our business is coordinating a lot of last-minute shipments. Our customers are looking for a fast, economical way to transport goods, and railroads and trucking firms want to leave with as full a load as they can.”
Handling transportation logistics translates into $1 billion in annual business for Hub Group, which became a publicly traded company in 1996, selling shares on the NASDAQ market. Its customers include Sears, Nabisco, Kraft, General Foods, and Procter & Gamble. Hub Group has since grown from a company with $754,000 in sales in 1996 to $1.1 billion in sales last year. Crain’s Chicago Business ranked Hub Group as the 15th fastest-growing public company in the Chicago area.
Yeager, 46, vice chairman and CEO, leads some 1,400 employees from the company’s headquarters in Lombard, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. Here, there are no flatbeds or forklifts, just white-collar workers using telephones and computers to book space on trains and trucks when customers come calling.
Hub Group was founded in 1971 by Yeager’s parents, Phillip and Joyce Yeager, who started in a one-room office above a flower shop in Hinsdale, Illinois. Phillip Yeager saw the need for a transportation middleman after spending 19 years at the Pennsylvania Railroad.
He decided to open the business in Chicago, the hub of transportation, deriving the company’s name from that idea.
David Yeager joined the company in 1975 upon graduating from the University of Dayton with a degree in chemistry. By then, Hub Group had grown from a company with $300,000 in sales its first year to one with $20 million in annual business and a network stretching across the United States.
Yeager worked his way up through his parents’ company, opening a branch in Pittsburgh in 1978, then moving to St. Louis in 1980 to open a branch there. He returned to the company’s headquarters in 1983 to run the sales and marketing department. When he returned to Chicago, Yeager entered the part-time program at the GSB.
“I [had] graduated with a degree in chemistry. Except when it came to transporting toxic chemicals, there weren’t really many applications to our business,” Yeager joked. “The M.B.A. from Chicago really formalized all the knowledge I had acquired through my experiences. It was a valuable degree,” he said. Over the years Yeager slowly took on more responsibility in a number of executive positions, culminating in 1988 with the position of vice chairman and CEO.
Yeager’s mother died in 1993, but his 72-year-old father retains the title of chairman and keeps active in the business when he isn’t wintering on Longboat Key, Florida. Phillip Yeager expresses confidence in his son’s handling of the day-to-day operations of Hub Group.
“David has worked his way from the ground up and has done a great job," Phillip Yeager said. “He has brought a lot of great ideas and zip to the company.”
For example, David Yeager just completed a five-year consolidation of the Hub Group, turning a loosely connected network of 35 independent branches into a more tightly controlled system managed at company headquarters. The new structure has helped Hub Group become more efficient and competitive in sales and marketing, Yeager said.
“When we lost a big contract in 1994 because no one thought to make a bid, we knew we had to do something,” Yeager said. “Since then, our national sales have risen from 15 percent to 40 percent.”
Yeager handled Hub Group’s initial public offering of stock in 1996, which enabled the company to acquire capital for consolidation and for future expansion. Yeager has his sights set on even more growth, his long-term vision including the completion of an Internet site that will enable customers to book rail and truck shipments online.–John T. Slania
Email GSB Chicago - GSB Chicago Front Page - GSB Home