Don Oren
A lasting legacy of operations and equipment innovation.
By the mid-'70s, Dart advertised itself as an innovative carrier that would design not only routes, but even equipment, to meet individual customer requests.
Did you ever wonder why 53-foot trailers are 53 feet? Why not 52, or 54? The answer can be traced back to Dart Transit's location across the road from a can manufacturing plant.
Privately owned Dart Transit, Eagan, Minn., might not be as big as some of the other truckload giants profiled here, but the company has left a lasting legacy on the truckload industry in both its innovative equipment ideas and its pioneering use of independent contractors.
At one time, however, Donald Oren had serious doubts whether the company founded by his father, Earl, would survive. "I had a backup plan," he says. "I started getting involved with real estate. That has always been my backup plan - it still is," he says with a laugh.
Earl Oren founded the company in 1934. The middle of the Great Depression was not a promising time to start a new business, but he did anyway, using his living room as his office. The company was incorporated as Dart Transit Co. four years later.
The company's first truck was a new 1934 Ford tractor, purchased for $600, and an 18-foot trailer, custom-built at Flour City Body Co. in Minneapolis. Because times were hard, Earl Oren couldn't afford to buy any more equipment. Instead, he turned to owner-operators who provided both equipment and labor. Many were farmers driving their farm trucks for Oren during the off-season.
Dart was nearly dormant during World War II, with fuel and tires rationed and drivers off to war. Earl worked in a defense plant to feed his family. After the war, he was able to revive the business, and in 1953 his son, Donald, officially joined the company.
"With the family business run out of the home, of course, it is something that I was sort of involved in even when I was just a kid," Don Oren says. "Drivers used to come to the house to get their advances. I guess my career started at the dinner table, you might say."
The younger Oren worked part time at his father's company while attending the University of Minnesota, and started full-time after he graduated.
One of his first duties was calling on customers. But he soon became discouraged because of the limitations forced on the small company by the regulated environment.
"I soon found out there weren't that many [customers] to call on because of our lack of [operating] authority," Don recalls. "I remember calling on the traffic manager for Armour in south St. Paul, and I realized we were pretty far down on the list and didn't have much of a hope of getting any kind of business there. Yet that was about the only authority we really had. I felt we had one arm tied behind us."
The company simply had to get more opportunities and more customers, which meant one thing: getting more operating authority from the ICC. "So I really committed my career to that effort, and my dad pretty much stayed on the operations side of things," Don says.
By 1955 the business moved into its first real office, behind a gas station on University Avenue in St. Paul, Minn.
In the early 1960s, changes in the law allowed Dart to convert from a contract carrier to a common carrier, which allowed it to interline. By paying other companies for the use of their authority, the company was able to expand its territory. "Instead of transferring loads in Chicago, we'd take the load right on through, even though we were on two different pieces of authority," Don says.
Once Dart had a happy customer using these pieced-together authorities, they would apply for authority for that route before the ICC. "It was something we already demonstrated we could do," Don says. The company also could show the ICC that it was offering something their competitors were not: door-to-door service. "The common carriers would move all their freight through terminals, but we went door to door. We had no terminals. And that was not common at the time."
Another thing competitors couldn't compete with was Dart's specialized equipment.
A happenstance of location was the impetus for what would become a big part of Dart's success. The company was located across the street from what was then American Can Co., a major customer.
When can manufacturers started putting their cans on pallets rather than in the large paper bags they had previously used, Dart developed specialized trailers that had the right dimensions for the pallets.
"In some cases, we got trailers that were taller on the inside, and [the can company] would make the pallets taller. The common carriers couldn't even handle them, and that locked us into the business," Don Oren says. "When we went to apply for authority, the common carriers were never able to keep up with us. We always had trailers that were a little wider and a little higher. So the specialized equipment had an awful lot to do with our success. It became our market niche."
When 32-footers were standard, Dart offered 35-footers. By the mid-'70s, the industry standard reached 40 feet, while Dart touted an "extra high cube" van that was 42 feet long, 92 inches wide and 99 inches tall.
By the mid-'70s, Dart advertised itself as an innovative carrier that would design not only routes and schedules, but the equipment to meet individual customer requests. They moved into larger headquarters down the road. In 1979, Don took over management of the company from his father.
When deregulation hit in 1980, all the hard times paid off.
"We were simply accustomed to struggling," Don says. "We were more or less forced into innovating and looking for market niches" under the regulated system. "We were very low cost and very efficient. Common carriers had become very top-heavy."
Personally, Don had mixed feelings about deregulation. "I'm a free enterprise person, so I thought it was a good idea. I disliked the ICC immensely, and I disliked the existing carriers who were pouncing on us every time we tried to do something. On the other hand, I'd worked awfully hard to get authority, and we had been very successful, finally, in the later years, getting authority." In fact, with authority to haul anything that could be sold in a hardware store or a general merchandise store like Target, Dart had operating authority that was as close to general commodities as you could get at the time. "I was pretty confident we'd do fine either way."
And they did. "I don't think [deregulation] was a big event for us," he says. "We were already on the road to expansion. We were already expanding lanes and commodities because of the authority we'd already acquired, so in a way we had a jump start on deregulation."
Now that Don didn't have to spend his career on obtaining operating authorities, he turned his attention to equipment. "We continued with specialized trailers and high-cube trailers in particular. The only difference was, we didn't do it to get authority. We did it to please our shippers and become more efficient."
The Orens continued to push the length limits, to 45 feet, 48 feet - and eventually 53 feet. Trailers also grew, to 102 inches wide and 13 feet 6 inches high.
"We had a lot to do with trailer innovation and trailer length laws," Oren says. "Why are trailers 53 feet long, not 52 or 54? Because the can pallets fit in that size trailer just perfect - you can close the doors and have no space left over, not a can would fall. If I've left any mark on the industry, it's the 53-foot trailer."
In 1984, Dart opened Fleetline as a Texas-based carrier to participate in the highly lucrative intrastate market. The two companies continued to introduce new trailer designs, including a "Superwide" thin-walled 53-footer with fiberglass-reinforced plywood walls. The thin wall design provided enough additional interior space to allow pinwheeling of can pallets.
Pinwheeling was another Dart first, providing 13% more can capacity in a 53-foot trailer, and 15% more can capacity in a 48-foot trailer. This design was followed by an even thinner aluminum "plate wall" that wrung 101<+>1/<->2 inches of interior width from a 102-inch-wide trailer.
"When trailers got to be 102 inches wide, we saw a crisis," Oren says. Can pallets are 44 by 56 inches. Side by side, that's only 88 inches wide, so there was space left over in a standard 102-inch-wide van. Turning one pallet, or pinwheeling, gave you 100 inches - too wide for the standard trailer interior. "Our trailers were too wide and not wide enough, so we were losing our advantage. So we worked hard to build a trailer wide enough on the inside so you could actually take advantage of that space."
Other changes to the trailer were also needed to make it work, such as very smooth interior walls so the tight-fitting pallets could slide easily.
Fleetline also built the country's largest fleet of 57-foot plate trailers for the Texas market.
Of course, all this innovation also required extensive legal and lobbying work to obtain operating rights for longer, wider and higher trailers. "I traveled all over the country talking to police departments and shippers to try to get routes [for 53-foot trailers] established from the interstates to the plant site and so forth," Oren says. "In the early days we had to circumvent a lot of states, but eventually those states had to capitulate because customers demanded it." One of his prized possessions is a photo of Maryland's governor signing a bill in 1992 making it the last state to legalize 53-footers.
Like Schneider, Dart was slow to move to conventional tractors, wanting the maneuverability of the shorter-wheelbase cabovers to go with those longer trailers. But eventually it gave in to the preferences of the owner-operators who were their lifeblood.
"Independent contractors are the backbone of our business," Oren says. "I know why my Dad started that way; it was very simple - he didn't have any money. Now it's just a way of life, and we think [owner-operators] are safer and we think they're more dedicated."
Dart currently contracts with 2,200 owner-operators. It has worked to help make its O-Os successful. Its Highway Sales subsidiary, founded in 1984, provides owner-operators (both Dart's and others) opportunities to lease and buy trucks.
Owner-operators leased to Dart have consistently been honored for their business acumen. Five of them have won the Truckload Carriers Assn.'s Independent Contractor of the Year award between 1990 and 2003 - one of them twice.
The company moved to its current location in Eagan, Minn., in 1989. Today, Dart, like many other truckload carriers, has diversified into other areas, including intermodal, city cartage, dedicated, regional as well as linehaul trucking. Don Oren has involved his three sons, David, Dan and Brad, in the business. (He also has a daughter, Angela, who is not in the business.)
"My three sons are basically running the companies right now," says the 73-year-old. "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the fact that they're here. I wouldn't do it anymore. But they are here, and I enjoy working with them. My wife, Beverly, was involved for 20 years in human resources; she's retired now. So it's very much of a family affair."
Don says his father, who died in 1993 at age 93, would be happy to see how the company has prospered. "I don't think he'd be surprised, though, because he was probably the most optimistic person I've ever known. He had to be an optimist to continue on through all the hard times and adversity that he went through. He had the vision."
— Deborah Lockridge
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