Heartland Express founder's legacy went beyond trucking success

Heartland Express founder and longtime leader Russ Gerdin, who died Friday at his North Liberty home, left behind far more than the successful trucking company he founded.

Gerdin, 70, left a legacy of hard work and quality that will live on through his family and employees, his company and family said in a statement released Saturday.

“He was driven at making Heartland Express the best company he could and doing the best at anything he tried,” said his son Michael Gerdin, who was appointed to the leadership role after Russ Gerdin's retirement last month.

“He was always focusing on giving it his 100 percent. We will miss his leadership and industry foresight,” Michael Gerdin added.

Russ Gerdin and his wife, Ann, were among Eastern Iowa's leading philanthropists, donating tens of millions to Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, Gerdin's alma mater, Moorhead State University in Minnesota, and many other causes.

The Iowa State University College of Business building and the University of Iowa Athletics Learning Center were named after the Gerdins. Gifts from the couple also made possible the construction of the Hope Lodge, for families of cancer patients visiting the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. A gift to the ISU College of Business enabled it to launch its first doctoral program.

Gerdin oversaw the growth of Heartland Express from four employees and 16 trucks in 1978 to one of the top truckload carriers in the United States. The company's revenue has grown from $21.6 million in 1986, when it went public, to $499.5 million in 2010, and its net income has grown from $3 million to $62.2 million over that period.

After being diagnosed with cancer, Gerdin received a liver transplant in 2006. He returned to work, but took a leave of absence in late January of this year because of a variety of health issues. The company announced his retirement on Sept. 2.

The son of a truck driver, Russ Gerdin had more than a dozen years of experience working for his father's company and then owning or co-owning several other companies. He bought Scott's Transportation of Swisher in 1978 and renamed it Heartland Express, the same name as his previous company.

A conservative financial philosophy of shunning debt was shaped in part by Gerdin's views on his own father's trucking business.

In an interview with Investor's Business Daily, he lamented how his father paid interest all his life on his fleet of trucks, and said, “I'll buy one truck and when I get that paid off, I'll buy another one - exactly different from my dad.”

Heartland Express took advantage of opportunities created by the deregulation of the trucking industry in 1979 to grow rapidly, and it went public in 1986. The North Liberty company has made five acquisitions since 1987.

In an interview nearly a decade ago, the-then chairman and CEO told The Gazette that Heartland's debt-free philosophy enabled it to survive industry downturns better than many rivals, and that he hoped more companies would offer programs like the Educational Trust Fund he set up to pay for the education of employees.

He preferred to plot the financial trend lines of his company - such as freight tonnages, fuel consumption, operating costs and revenues - by hand on a paper graph rather than with a computer, because plotting the data put him in better touch with how the company was performing.

Gerdin was inducted into the Iowa Business Hall of Fame in 2006. Among the many other honors he received was recognition by DeMarche Associates of the of the best CEOs in the nation, based on generating shareholder value for the least amount of pay at a time of public outcry over high executive compensation.

In addition to his trucking interests, Russ Gerdin owned Hawkeye State Bank in the Iowa City area for 17 years as it grew from less than $20 million in assets to $140 million. He was an active real estate investor, involved in many deals that led to industrial and retail growth in the area.

Hawkeye State Bank was sold to West Des Moines State Bank in 2003, and is now West Bank.

Gerdin is survived by his wife, Ann, three children and their spouses: Michael and Nicole (Fountas) Gerdin; Eric and Julie (Gerdin) Durr, Brian and Angela (Gerdin) Janssen) and ten grandchildren. He also is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Thomas and Kay (Gerdin) Hudson of Wolfeboro, N.H. and many nieces and nephews.