Tag: Big Employers

Entrepreneurs

The 11-year-old boy’s dream that became Louisville’s single-biggest private employer
UPS Worldport
UPS started its hub at Louisville International Airport in 1982.

Boulevard focuses on news about some of Louisville’s biggest employers, nonprofits, and cultural institutions. This is one in an occasional series about them.

The first time many people in Louisville heard of United Parcel Service was in a May 1938 issue of The Courier-Journal, when syndicated columnist Dale Carnegie wrote about 11-year-old James E. Casey walking down a sidewalk in Seattle, and catching sight of a Special Delivery wagon pulled by a team of high-stepping horses.

James Casey
Casey in an undated photo.

“I’m going to have a team of horses and deliver things for people,” Casey said that day in 1899, in Carnegie’s retelling. Casey eventually started the American Messenger Co. with seven boys delivering packages by bicycle.

By the time Carnegie’s column appeared, the company was called United Parcel Service and employed 2,500 employees delivering as many as 500,000 packages a day during the Christmas rush.

Nearly 80 years later, UPS has become a giant in shipping worldwide, with Louisville the heart of a global network of 12 major air hubs. It employs 22,000 workers at the Worldport hub at Louisville International Airport. It’s the biggest fully automated package handling facility in the world, according to UPS. It turns over approximately 130 aircraft daily, processing an average of 1.6 million packages a day, with a record of nearly 5 million packages processed on peak day 2013.

(If it was a city, Worldport would rank as Kentucky’s 17th biggest by population — one rung ahead of Radcliff in Hardin County.)

UPS has had a hub in Louisville since 1982, when it was expanding into air service to meet growing demand for faster delivery. Louisville was a logical choice because it’s centrally located in the U.S. Since then, it’s been through two $1 billion expansions here. Driven by growing demand for e-commerce, especially via Amazon, UPS announced plans in May 2016 to spend another $300 million to boost capacity.

This time-lapse video shows some of the activity that takes place during each sort.

Founder Casey died in 1983, at age 95. Today, UPS is headquartered in Atlanta. Its $58 billion in revenue last year ranked it No. 48 on the Fortune 500 list of biggest companies. Worldwide, it has 440,000 employees. It’s been a publicly traded company since November 1999. David Abney has been chairman and CEO since 2014.

Latest Headlines

Churchill and ‘The Greatest’ met in ’63; B-F results tomorrow have EPS up, but revs down; and Papa’s pan pizzas are back
Ali at Churchill Downs
Ali training at Churchill Downs in 1963 in recently surfaced photo.

A news summary, focused on big employers; updated 3:32 p.m.

BROWN-FORMAN reports fiscal fourth-quarter results tomorrow by 8 a.m. Analysts expect earnings per share of 72 cents vs. 66 cents a year ago, on $899 million in revenue vs. $947 million. There will be a conference call with management and analysts at 10 a.m.; details. Also, Newsweek magazine ranked the company the “greenest” beverage alcohol company among U.S. publicly traded firms (press release).

CHURCHILL DOWNS: Muhammad Ali is seen on a training run at Louisville’s iconic race track in a 1963 photograph that has just surfaced. It’s one of thousands photographer Curt Gunther took of the Louisville native during the years he accompanied the prize fighter in and out of the ring (CNN). Ali died late Friday in Phoenix at 74 after battling Parkinson’s disease for decades. The funeral he planned for himself in secret this Friday may be without precedent in recent Louisville history.

KFC: Chick-fil-A’s skip-the-line ordering app is no longer No. 1 in Apple’s App store, but it’s still holding a respectable No. 3 — enough to continue embarrassing rival KFC, which launched its own app the same day. More than 1 million people have downloaded Chick’s One app since it was announced last Wednesday. How they pulled it off (The Atlantic). In France, KFC says a video purporting to show a customer finding a whole, cooked chick in a bucket meal is a hoax; video of the alleged incident has been widely shared across social media (Express).

PAPA JOHN’S is offering pan pizza for the first time since 2005 in select markets, including parts of Kentucky; Evansville, Ind., and Denver (Courier-Journal). In Winston-Salem, N.C., an armed man robbed a Papa John’s Sunday at 3:40 p.m. after forcing an employee to open the cash registers. The man, said to be in his 30s, left after ordering the employee and two other workers to the back of the store (Winston-Salem Journal).

PIZZA HUT: A restaurant in Huron, S.D., was destroyed in a fire early Saturday morning the appeared to have started in the kitchen area (Plainsman). In New Zealand’s North Island, as many as three men armed with a machete robbed a Pizza Hut of $298 U.S. at 11 p.m. yesterday, leaving two employees shaken but unharmed. Police said the men were “heavily disguised” with balaclavas and one wore a hi-visibility vest during the incident in Palmerston North (News Hub).

In other news, U.S. stocks were mostly flat after government data showed first-quarter business productivity fell (Google Finance). The 11 big employers in the Boulevard Stock Portfolio were mixed; Ford was up 1.8% to $13.41 less than 30 minutes before the closing bell.

Latest Headlines

Haier opens Russian fridge factory, as GE close nears today; Ford shakes up China; and ‘you were hot’ at Dallas Roadhouse
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Two employees work on an Appliance Park spray line in 1953, two years after construction started. China-based Haier could close on its $5.4 billion purchase of the GE complex today.

A news summary, focused on big employers; updated 3:13 p.m.

GE: Haier has opened a new refrigerator factory in Russia to serve increasing demand from the European market. The new plant is the first joint Sino-Russian business project in a non-energy field (China.org). Back in the U.S., Haier wants its product development model to be more collaborative with its supply chain (Plastic News). The Chinese company could close on its $5.4 billion purchase of GE’s appliance business as soon as today. Meanwhile, GE is considering scrapping annual raises, as well as the longstanding and much-imitated system of rating employees on a five-point scale — moves that could lead other major companies to reconsider their own compensation plans (Bloomberg).

FORD reshuffled China sales leadership: Dave Schoch, group vice president and president of Asia Pacific, will take over and add the title of chairman and chief executive officer, Ford China. “As our growth plans in China have developed, this market is delivering an increasingly important portion of our revenue and profits globally,” CEO Mark Fields said. “Elevating the reporting of this business right now reflects China’s importance in our profitable growth plan going forward” (press release). Ford shares were up 1.2% to $13.19 40 minutes before the closing bell.

KFC will temporarily close at least some of its 12 restaurants in the southern African nation of Botswana this week after being placed under partial bankruptcy liquidation. Franchiser VPB Propco said it had been trying to the sell the restaurants for the past year without success, and the only option left was to shutter them, eliminating 400 jobs (Bloomberg). KFC clarified that the liquidation will not affect its business in neighboring South Africa (AFK Insider).

BROWN-FORMAN: Two of the newly appointed members of the board of directors — Campbell Brown and Marshall Farrer — have disclosed stock holdings in the family controlled spirits and wine company. Brown listed sole ownership of 805,313 Class A shares, and 312,208 Class B shares (SEC document). Farrer listed sole ownership of 315 Class A shares, and 116 Class B (SEC document). Both men also disclosed beneficial ownership of thousands of other A and B shares, but because some are counted twice as a result of overlapping trusts, it’s unclear how many shares are involved.

Fortune 500The new Fortune 500 list of the biggest-revenue companies includes three in Louisville. HUMANA (No. 52); YUM (218); and KINDRED (372). They all appeared on the magazine’s list last year, too. Walmart held onto the No. 1 spot in the rankings published today (Fortune).

TEXAS ROADHOUSE: A customer at a Dallas area restaurant regrets a missed opportunity for romance with another diner. “I was sitting outside with my two boys waiting to be seated,” he wrote in the Craigslist Missed Connections section. “You came out and we locked eyes. . . . You then asked if you knew me! You were hot, but I was honest and said no. I wouldn’t mind getting to know you tho! 😉 tell me what you looked like or what you were wearing” (Craigslist Dallas).

In other news, the late boxing heavyweight and humanitarian Muhammad Ali will be buried Friday at Cave Hill Cemetery, a decision the Louisville native made that will raise the profile of the storied burial ground. Ali died late Friday at a Phoenix hospital after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 74, and lived principally in Phoenix. His family asked that expressions of sympathy take the form of donations to the Muhammad Ali Center downtown (WFPL). About the Muhammad Ali Center.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and other major stock indices rose shortly before noon as investors look toward a speech by Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen (Google Finance). All 11 big employers in Boulevard’s Stock Portfolio were trading higher.

Photo, top: University of Louisville Digital Collections.

Snapshot

In Appliance Park sale, a long chapter in local history comes to a bittersweet conclusion
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Construction underway on GE Appliance Park in 1952, in this aerial view from the University of Louisville Photo Archives.

China’s Haier Co. may close on its $5.4 billion purchase of the iconic 65-year-old Appliance Park as soon as Monday. Built during the rapidly growing post-World War II economy, the 1,000-acre park churned out dishwashers and other home appliances for the burgeoning baby boom generation. Construction started in 1951.

With Ford and other big local manufacturers, GE launched a solid middle class that became the foundation of Louisville’s economy. At one time, the park employed 25,000 workers. It was a self-sufficient city providing many of its own needs, right down to mail handling. (In 1953, it got its own Zip Code: 40225.)

But that started to ebb in the 1970s, as manufacturers sought cheaper labor by moving production overseas. Appliance Park now employs only 6,000 workers. Service jobs have become the fastest-growing part of Louisville’s economy. But they’re often part-time and don’t pay as well as factory work once did.

GE women working
Women work on the pickling and spray booth line in this 1953 photo, also from the photography archives.

Manufacturing employment last peaked in the Louisville metro area in 1999, when there were an average 95,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It then fell to a low of 60,900 in 2010, when the economy was still recovering from the Great Recession. The better news is that it’s crept up every year since, to 76,500 last year. But it’s extremely unlikely it will ever return to the glory days of 1951, when Appliance Park was king.

Factory jobs

Entrepreneurs

Texas Roadhouse is the biggest Louisville-based restaurant chain you’ve never heard of
Texas Roadhouse
Founded in 1993, the company now has nearly 500 restaurants and 48,000 employees.

Boulevard focuses on news about some of Louisville’s biggest employers, nonprofits, and cultural institutions. This is one in an occasional series about them.

Put your books away; it’s time for a pop quiz!

Ever heard of a Louisville-based restaurant chain called KFC? Of course you have. Papa John’s? Certainly.

Now, what about that other big Louisville-based chain: Texas Roadhouse. Not so much?

KFC (15,000 restaurants in more than 125 countries) and Papa John’s (4,700 stores, 37 nations) are better known in Louisville at least partly because they’re older, and promote themselves more locally. There’s the KFC Yum Center downtown, and Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium at the University of Louisville. And who hasn’t seen Papa John’s founder John Schnatter in one of his ubiquitous TV commercials?

Kent Taylor
Taylor

But Texas Roadhouse has come a long way, too — and in a relatively short time. Chairman and CEO Kent Taylor started the steakhouse chain in 1993 with a single restaurant in southern Indiana. Some 23 years later, it’s grown to nearly 500 company-owned and franchised restaurants in 49 states plus five foreign countries, and 48,000 employees.

That three big restaurant companies are all based in Louisville isn’t a huge surprise given an economic principle with an unwieldy name: agglomeration. That’s where companies beget other companies in the same industry nearby, all benefiting from the increasingly specialized labor pool and economies of scale: for example, intellectual property attorneys experienced in the fast-food trade.

Peanut shells
Western theme peanut shells.

Taylor, for one, started out as a KFC manager in 1990, when he returned to his Louisville hometown. Three years later, he opened the first Texas Roadhouse, in Clarksville, Ind. The restaurants are known for their western themes, line-dancing servers, peanut shell-strewn floors, and Texas Red Chili and ribs.

The company went public in 2004. Its headquarters is at 6040 Dutchman’s Lane.

Now 60, Taylor is the biggest individual stockholder, with 4.4 million shares, or 6.2% of all, according to the 2016 shareholders’ proxy report. His stake was worth more than $200 million in June 2016, when shares were trading at a record high of $46 each.