Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/466315
48 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | FEBRUARY 2015 C O V E R S T O RY | C A R E E R L E A D E R S H I P A W A R D together and returned it to the neighbors, so no harm was done," White says. "But it was understood in the neighborhood from then on that you needed to lock your equipment up unless you wanted that White kid to get ahold of it and tear it apart." Walt White was infl uential on young Doug in other ways as well. Whenever it was time to tackle a project, large or small, the son was welcome to join in and help out. "I remember when he put an addition on the house," White says. "I was there working right alongside him. I learned a lot. I think he was really happy getting to share his knowledge and his passion with us kids." By the time he was a teen, Doug had discovered automotive mechanics and begun to apply his talents accordingly. "For years, I thought the only reason Volkswagen Beetles existed was so you could tear them down, soup them up, turn them into dune bug- gies and take them out in the woods and destroy them," he says with a laugh. CAREER BEGINNINGS White says that by the time he was out of high school in 1974, it was obvious that college was not in his future. He already was operating heavy equipment for a local landfi ll, but what he really wanted to do was work on Class 8 trucks. "Cars were fun, but trucks were serious machines," White says. "They were big. They were powerful. I wanted to know how they worked." He sought out the owner of a local repair shop to ask for a job and in the process found the fi rst of several mentors in his career. "Old Benny," White remembers. "He's passed on now, and I can- not for the life of me recall his last name. He was a funny, crusty old guy whose shop was in Camden, New Jersey – a rough, rough part of town – and he set me straight right off the bat." White strode into Benny's run-down offi ce and told him that he wanted to tear diesel engines down. "That what you wanna do?" the old man asked, unim- pressed. "Yeah," White replied. "Good," Benny said. "Start by going out there and changing the oil in that truck." "I don't want to do oil changes," White scoffed. "I want to tear engines down!" "I understand that," Benny replied. "And you will. Once you know how to properly change the oil in that truck." Under Benny's watchful eye, White learned the importance of preventive maintenance and how to service trucks properly. In a couple of years, those experiences landed White his fi rst job with a national fl eet. In 1978, he went to work for Profi cient Food Co. – the distribution arm for the Denny's Restaurant chain at its New Jersey facility. Here, for the fi rst time, White expanded his diesel engine knowledge with a refrigeration certifi cation, graduating from ThermoKing's technical school. White enjoyed troubleshoot- ing reefer units and found himself a valuable commodity at Profi cient, as the company was in the early stages of bringing new ThermoKing start/stop units into the fl eet. "Profi cient's fl eet manager out in California had recognized early on that these new units offered signifi - cant fuel savings," White recalls. "We were retrofi tting them onto all our reefer units." After several years with Profi cient, White took a second job at a friend's towing company and also founded his own mobile refrigeration repair business, which was a success. But White was married now with children, and the demands of working two jobs and managing a business proved to be fatal to the marriage. "It clearly took a toll on the marriage," White says. "I was just never home." One day, White was out soliciting new business for his refrigeration repair service when he called on a fl eet owned by Keen Leasing out of Carlisle, N.J. A few days after dropping a business card Doug White was born into a solid blue-collar New Jersey family. White's mother taught him traits he still relies on every day – virtues like honesty and compassion – while his father instilled discipline. From an early age, Doug White was obsessed with understanding how things worked – and, more importantly, why they didn't work when needed. That drive to understand how and why things function remains with him to this day.