CRST’s Dave Rusch, speaking at the CBJ’s offices in North Liberty. PHOTO ADAM MOORE
Sponsored by West Bank, this is the latest edition of the CBJ’s Q&A feature with Nate Kaeding and notable Iowa business and cultural leaders, available first to CBJ members. Read more about the idea for the series here, and watch the video interview at the CBJ’s YouTube channel.
By Nate Kaeding
news@corridorbusiness.com
At the end of this month, CRST International’s Dave Rusch will retire as president and CEO after a remarkable 27-year career leading the Cedar Rapids-based trucking and logistics giant.
By all accounts, his career and track record may be one of the most impressive in recent Corridor business history. Most notably, Mr. Rusch’s leadership has been instrumental in growing the company’s revenues from $300 million when he started in 1991 as vice president of operations to today’s mark of $1.7 billion.
Sitting down with Dave to talk about his career, it became evident early on that the man is driven and likes to win. He really likes winning. Within the first five minutes of our talk, he was quoting the legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, saying “Winning isn’t the most important thing, it’s the only thing.” Of course, winning isn’t easy and the trajectory of a successful career isn’t perfectly linear. Mr. Rusch reflected back on his unique path to the C-suite, the most memorable moments of his career, and the advice that he’d give to his younger self (if only he’d listen).
NK: Retirement is right around the corner – are you excited about the change?
DR: It’s going to be a transition for me because I’m kind of a workaholic. The one that’s really panicked is my wife, because she usually sees me about five hours a day. [laughs]
Take us through your career a bit. Where did you get your start?
I grew up in Wisconsin and I wanted to be an FBI agent — I just wanted to chase bad guys. So I went to the University of Wisconsin, and at the time [to be an FBI agent], you either needed to be a lawyer or a CPA. So I went the CPA route — I didn’t even know what CPA meant. So I went to Wisconsin and got my accounting degree and then went to University of North Dakota and got my master’s.
I worked a little bit in Chicago for a big accounting firm and in 1974, I got a call from the FBI. I knew they’d been looking at my background because I heard from people back home, asking “Hey, are you in trouble?” So I went into the FBI and spent seven years there. I loved it.
In the FBI, do you get to choose what sort of bad guys you get to chase?
Well, they move you to the office where they have a need, and at the time, New Orleans was just riddled with corruption, so they were looking for guys to go down there and spend some time. I had the luxury and fun of working the Patty Hearst case a bit.
But you know the government’s a bureaucracy. You worked your tail off, but you were limited to what you could do and the scope of what you could do. You follow the policy book. So my friend and I started to buy up and renovate little houses. At night, we would take our suit off and our gun off and do sheetrock and electrical work. During the course of those seven years, I think we did 50 houses.
A little side hustle — your original side hustle.
[Laughs] Yeah, but I loved it. Then in early 1980, we both got our transfer orders on the same day — me to Chicago and he to Cleveland. And he was a Florida guy, so we sat on the porch of one of our houses and sipped beer and said, “what are we gonna do?” So we made a decision that we were going to resign from the bureau.
That was tough, because we both loved it. But we set up two companies: one renovating houses, Rusch and Hayes Investments, and another one, Rusch and Hayes Investigations, basically doing private investigative work.
Looking back on that decision, was that more a reflection of you growing tired of the bureaucracy at the FBI or more about satisfying that entrepreneurial spirit?
You know, at that point in time, I wanted a better conduit for generating some wealth. And at the bureau, you are paid well, but if you wanted to move up, you had to take your gun off and get off the street, and that wasn’t appealing to me. This was more of an entrepreneurial kind of adventure for us. We branched out and did it for two years — my partner ran the investigative side, and I ran the building side. But two years into it, [President] Jimmy Carter drove the prime interest rate up to 22 percent … so I made the decision that I had to do something different.
A friend of mine was a head recruiter, and he said “North American Van Lines is looking for a foreign corrupt practices expert.” They had some problems in the Philippines with fraud, so I went from working bank robberies and political corruption in New Orleans to sitting in a six-by-six cubicle and working with a bunch of accountants, with adding machines going around.
It was very difficult for me, but at one point in time, [CEO] Ken Maxfield was my mentor. He walked in my office and said, “Rusch, you wanna report history or you wanna make history?” He saw something in me and said I needed to move into operations. So, I moved into one of their divisions as their vice president of operations. I was there for 10 years and then when he retired in 1989, he became one of CRST’s first outside board members.
At the time, CRST owned a company down in Birmingham which was having some growing pains and financial problems. Ken Maxfield told John Smith, the owner of CRST, “Go hire Dave Rusch. He’ll go down and fix it for you.” So that was really my start at CRST, which was a lot of fun, because you could feel the entrepreneurialism. From Harold Smith starting it with two trucks and growing it to John taking over, it was very entrepreneurial, very quick-reacting. It really fed my personality.
How would you describe your professional approach and how you’ve gone about being a leader at CRST?
I think when I look back on my whole career, the few things that I bring to a party, that I think help create an organization’s success, I learned from my father. My dad’s always been my hero — he had actually had a couple little books written about him, about his World War II days and so forth — but the thing that I bring to the party is passion. I’ll tell people that I’m not the wizziest guy in the room, but nobody’s gonna outwork me.
As you look back on your career at CRST, what are some of the most memorable wins you had?
One of the things that I’m very proud of is that for three years running, we were the fastest-growing truckload carrier in the United States. And I think for a number of years — maybe still — we’re one of the most profitable truckload carriers in the industry. That’s exciting.
I think the most enjoyable part of the last 10 years is that we were very successful on the acquisition front. We bought, I think, five companies in the last six years, the last one being Gardner Trucking out in California, which is the largest privately held [trucking] company out there [based in California]. They had 2,000 trucks, and our acquisition team just did marvelous. They went in and they integrated well, and none of them blipped in their profitability.
Is there a story behind any of those deals you can share?
In our world, we run a total of 8,000 trucks across eight operating companies. We operate in virtually every state in the nation and the toughest state, unequivocally, to operate in is California. It’s regulation, regulation. We’re out there big time because there’s a lot of freight coming in through the ports. And I got a call from the president of Gardner Trucking about four years ago now. He said, “Dave, I understand you do acquisitions well.”
The thing he liked about it [a merger] is all those companies that we buy, most of them have strong goodwill associated with their names. They’re successful companies, so we keep them and run them separately.
So me and my CFO, we flew out there and sat at the conference table. I said, “Tom, why would I want to come out here and buy your company in California? Right now, there’s a host of litigation going on between trucking companies and California.” And he said, “Dave, because I know how to deal with it.” It was a brilliant answer, and eight months later we bought the company. It’s been a very good acquisition for us.
There’s always the wins and big games in football, but there’s also the big losses — as you look back, was there one challenge you faced or decision you made that, if you were to go back, you would’ve done something differently?
You know, the first six or seven years when I got here, I thought I was invincible, I could do it myself. I was a little dictator sitting in my office, telling my people what to do. And I probably didn’t start developing management talent until probably 2009 or 2010, when it became our number one priority. Because you’re only as good as your people, and one person can grow out of the ability to run it by themselves. It happened with me, so we focus a lot on that. That was probably one of my errors early on when I got here.
What caused you to appreciate the importance of management and building a great team around you?
Just sheer growth. You know, if you ask around the industry, people that don’t really understand us, they would say, “CRST’s a difficult place to work.” Going out on the street and hiring people, bringing in people from other companies is always difficult. We’re demanding. Everybody has to walk in that front door every day and produce. We’ve got compensation packages and incentive packages that reward our people very well, but they have to come in every day. They don’t need to be perfect, but they have to hit base hits. So we’re a challenging place to work for if you don’t have that inner passion to win every day.
What we’re doing now is bringing people in from the University of Iowa, from Iowa State, from Kirkwood and getting them acclimated to our company, so they can understand our culture. When they start entering management, they already know what we’re looking for.
You talked a little bit about your work ethic — are there any, not necessarily regrets, but things you may have missed outside of the workplace throughout your life?
You know, I don’t know how I would do. [CRST] Chairman John Smith and his wife have a home down in south Florida. For years, John would say, “Go down there and spend a month with your wife and just be down there. You can work on the internet with all of our technology and telecommunication.” But it’s just not me. I’ve gotta be there, I’ve gotta be in the meetings. I need to sense what’s going on.
So, right now, if I look back and say, “Gee, I shouldn’t have been quite as passionate as I was…” In a few weeks, I’m looking at life after CRST, when you turn in the car and you turn in the keys. And, you know, I like golf, but 18 holes in a week would be a lot — and I’m not good at it. [Laughs] So I have to look at that second life. I still have a fire burning where I want to create. I want to do something that’s productive. I still want to win. And working on shuffleboard down in south Florida’s not the answer to it.
RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS
Given the chance, what profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
I did leave the FBI with the goal of being a major player in the house renovation market in New Orleans, so probably dabbling in real estate.
Favorite business leader?
Ken Maxfield, he was my number one. He’s really the one that pushed me into taking that chance and doing something else, and I admire him. But as business leaders, I have to say the Smith family. I look at them as a family of leadership.
Preferred daily news source?
I’m a CPA by trade, so I’m in the numbers daily. We’ve created an intricate, detailed network of KPIs for every one of our companies that me and my executive team look at daily.
Favorite podcast or a TV show?
I’m not big on movies and stuff, but I’m a sports fanatic — football, college and pros.
Motivational quote?
Winston Churchill said “success is the ability to move from one failure to another without losing your enthusiasm.”
30 extra minutes in the day?
I’d work out. I’ve always worked out at least an hour and a half a day.
Favorite business books?
David Maraniss wrote a book about the life of Vince Lombardi called, “When Pride Still Mattered.” It talks about passion and the quest.
How do you define success?
As an executive, I always define success on three criteria: one, can I look at the shareholders and know that I met their expectations? Two, do my customers perceive me as the best in class? And three, does this work environment allow my management team the opportunity to grow and prosper?
