EXECUTIVE MEMOIRS

Harvey C. Fruehauf

BOOK:  NO CEILING ON EFFORT: The Harvey C. Fruehauf Story

Between the two World Wars, young entrepreneur Harvey C. Fruehauf (1896-1968) transformed his father’s struggling blacksmith shop in Detroit (MI) into the largest trailer manufacturer in the world: Fruehauf Trailer Corporation. Along the way, he became an outspoken champion of the trucking industry, an equally vocal opponent of unions and a leading voice in national transportation policy. When Fruehauf left the company in 1953, the company he built logged close to $200 million in annual sales and commanded approximately 40 percent of market share. Fruehauf went on to become a founding investor in Burger King, a life-long director of paper giant Georgia-Pacific and one of the country’s quietly wealthy businessmen until his death in 1968. His only son commissioned Kathi Ann Brown to research and write the first-ever biography of Fruehauf: No Ceiling on Effort: The Harvey C. Fruehauf Story. In-depth research included investigation of Fruehauf family records; automotive, trucking, and labor archives; the personal papers collections of Fruehauf’s many powerful peers in Detroit and elsewhere; dozens of other external libraries, museums and archives.