Just Call Me Hays : Recollections on 42 Years Railroading

by Richard E. Bussard, Hays T. Watkins Jr., Thomas E. Hoppin, et al.

Recollections, reactions and reflections on 42 years of railroading. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1929102038
• ISBN13: 9781929102037
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: R. E. B. Communications and Publishing Inc. ,
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

How CEOs of Modern Corporations Operate

"Just Call Me Hays: Recollections, Reactions and Reflections On 42 Years of Railroading," by Hays T. Watkins, REB Communications, Jacksonville, FL, 2001. This 328 page hardback is the professional autobiography of Hays T. Watkins, CEO of CSX Railroad until retiring in 1991. If one wants a clear picture of how the CEO of a major corporation spends his time this book is a good place to begin. Watkins was a farm kid. He was born on a farm in Henry Co., KY in 1926. He developed an early interest in railroading, because several family members worked for railroads. He went to Bowling Green College of Commerce in KY and studied accounting. After a brief stint in the military at the end of World War II, he went to Northwestern University for an MBA and became a CPA. He joined the C & O Railroad in Cleveland, OH as a Staff Analyst in 1949. He was laid off after only two months on the job, but was soon recalled. The book describes a typical career for a railroad executive. Watkins worked in a series of jobs, some entailing extensive travel to various locations on the railroad, and gradually worked his way up the ladder. He was a mid-level manager when the first computers were installed, and when the C & O merged with the B & O to become Chessie System. He was named CEO in 1971. A major event in railroading during his career was the bankruptcy of Penn Central on June 21, 1970. Watkins believed this was an incompatible merger between the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central. Rather than cooperating as a team, executives and employees seemed constantly to be at war. During his career, Watkins worked hard to avoid that calamity when Chessie undertook mergers, as for example with the Seaboard Coastline. Watkins is not a railroad operations man. Therefore his book contains few stories about the choice of locomotives, or changes in signaling, upgrades to main lines, building new lines, or similar details often found in books on railroading. Instead, he focuses very much on his interactions with people. How he got along with his bosses and coworkers, and eventually how mentors and coworkers retired, and/or considerations when executives were selected for promotion. The book makes clear that modern railroads rotate their executives through a series of assignments to groom them for promotion. Watkins describes his efforts to develop good working relationships with representatives in Congress, mayors, governors, and other key officials - not to ask for favors, but to open channels of communication, so the railroad could express its view when important issues came up. The book describes various business opportunities considered by the railroad. Those included a constant array of merger opportunities, especially during the 1970s. Chessie offered to acquire parts of Penn Central soon after its bankruptcy, but Norfolk & Western was unwilling to accept what was left of the system. The opportunity arose again after the failure of Co