[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 9 (Monday, January 23, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E54]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HONORING DONALD SCHNEIDER

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BILL SHUSTER

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, January 23, 2012

  Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise today to 
recognize Mr. Donald Schneider, a pioneer who transformed the 
transportation industry as we know it. I am pleased to have the 
opportunity to call attention to his service and his remarkable story 
of American entrepreneurship and ingenuity.
  Mr. Schneider, chairman emeritus and former president of Schneider 
National, Inc., ran one of the nation's largest truckload carriers with 
nearly 12,500 tractors and 35,000 trailers, all painted in a distinct 
shade of orange. You may have seen his trucks driving down our great 
national highways, hauling goods from coast to coast. Behind these 
trucks was a stellar businessman who leveraged new technologies and 
innovations to grow his company into one of the most successful, 
recognizable, and respected transportation and logistics companies in 
North America. In the process, an industry was transformed and millions 
of Americans benefited from his life's work without them even 
realizing.
  Mr. Schneider was a hard working man who began as a mechanic's 
assistant and truck driver at the age of 18. He graduated from St. 
Norbert College with an undergraduate degree in business and married 
his wife Pat in 1957. After serving a 13 month military tour of duty in 
Korea, Schneider graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton 
Business School, then began to work in his father's trucking business 
in 1961, fusing his passion for trucking with a keen business sense.
  Over the next three decades, Mr. Schneider expanded his fleet 
substantially, using modern management techniques and acquisition of 
regional trucking companies to grow his business. Under Mr. Schneider's 
leadership, Schneider National was one of only a few pre-deregulation 
truckload carriers that survived and flourished after the Motor Carrier 
Act of 1980.
  Later in that same decade, his company even began to install 
satellite communication in trucks. By allowing companies to track their 
trucks in real time, consumers benefitted from faster package 
deliveries and just-in-time inventory management.
  His company's entrance into the logistics business in 1993 heralded a 
new frontier in trucking by enhancing the ability of companies to 
manage time-sensitive deliveries and inventories. Meanwhile, his use of 
standard-sized trailers that could run over the road and ride on 
railroad flatcars--known as intermodal transportation--established 
partnerships with the railroads and was followed by all others in the 
industry.
  Now, it is unimaginable how the trucking industry ever fared without 
Mr. Schneider's visionary ways.
  Though Mr. Schneider was a great man, he never lost his common touch. 
He insisted on being called by his first name, and was a community 
philanthropist who was active in several charities. In a 1997 
interview, he was quoted as saying, ``My job is important, but it's no 
more important than the driver or the people in the service center.''
  Mr. Schneider was a man who had a true servant's heart, and America 
has been enriched by his service to this country. His entrepreneurial 
spirit will endure not only in his company's orange trucks and 
trailers, but in the homes of countless Americans who have benefitted 
from his innovations. I invite the American people to join me in 
celebrating his life.

                          ____________________