Fifty years after he was born in the Tyrolean Alps in Ruttka, Austria (now Czechoslovakia), John Daniel Hertz retired from business. He had enjoyed the fight to get rich; but, now, why bother about it any longer? He has a pleasure-loving wife who, in turn, has a stable full of fine horses, including Reigh Count, winner of the Kentucky Derby, now in England getting primed for more victories. Wherever Mr. Hertz goes in the U. S. he can ride in the taxicabs which he has made numerous, famous, inexpensive. He is going to Florida, to Europe, to fun. . . .
The retirement of Mr. Hertz, last week, was complete. He resigned as president and chairman of the board of Chicago Yellow Cab Co.* He sold all his holdings to Charles A. McCullough, of Parmelee Transfer Co.. who becomes chairman of Chicago Yellow Cab Co. Knowlton L. (“Snake”) Ames Jr., 33, son of the famed Princeton footballer, himself a fair footballer, recently general manager of the Chicago Journal of Commerce, becomes Yellow Cab’s president.
Mr. Hertz’s final act was to give 7,000 shares of Yellow Cab stock to 60 employes who had been with him since the start, and to sell them 7,000 additional shares on an easy deferred payment plan.
It is unlikely that John Daniel Hertz remembers going to Chicago at the age of five; long journeys, to children, are merely a blur. But certainly he has a distinct impression of the beating his father gave him, which amused him to run away from home at eleven. He solo his school books for $2, took up residence at the Waifs’ Home, got a job as copy boy for the Morning News. Evenings, he hawked papers on Chicago street corners. His father made him come home and go tc school. Six months of that, and he ran away again. Back to the newspapers, he was errand boy for a night editor and did some exhibition boxing. Later, as a sports writer for the Record, he earned as high as $3,000 a year. When the Record and the Herald merged, Writer Hertz was left without a job. So he managed boxers.
Up to 1907, he had never sat in an automobile. That did not prevent him from becoming an automobile salesman. He earned $15,000 in commissions the first year. Then, in 1910. he went into the taxicab business with Walden W. Shaw. The Chicago Athletic Club wanted a private cab service. Messrs. Hertz and Shaw had only two second-hand cars. They borrowed eight others, painted them brightly, paraded past the Chicago Athletic Club, won the contract.
In 1915, John Daniel Hertz was ready to make the taxicab an industry and to upset all previous methods. He had engineers design a small, tough cab. of low upkeep cost. He manufactured dozens, hundreds of them. He painted them an eye-arresting yellow-orange. He announced rates that knocked the public’s eye out— 30¢ for the first mile, and no charge for the “dead haul” (let a driver go five miles to get a 30¢ passenger if necessary). The Yellow cabs were shined up every day. Dentists and doctors took care of the drivers. Knowing well the importance of his drivers, Mr. Hertz often rode with them, helped beat off strikers.
Everyone knows how Yellow cabs swept Chicago and the U. S., how the common stock skyrocketed. In 1925, Mr. Hertz sold Yellow Cab Manufacturing Co. to General Motors and remained chairman of the board of the merged company for a short time. Mr. Hertz also brought about the merger of Chicago Motor Coach Co. and Fifth Avenue Coach Co. (Manhattan) into Omnibus Corp. of America. He organ ized the Hertz Drivurself Corp.
Perhaps the complete retirement of Mr. Hertz was hastened by the bitter taxicab war between Yellows and Checkers in Chicago last autumn (TIME, Oct. 15), in which drivers were beaten up, garages bombed and a fire mysteriously started in the Hertz stables at Gary. Ill., burning to death eleven thoroughbreds.
Said Mr. Hertz last week: “It is going to feel good to shake off these cares. Trying to quit work has been no easy task.”
*This is an operating company and is not to be confused with Yellow Cab Manufacturing Co. which Mr. Hertz sold to General Motors in 1925 and which General Motors renamed Yellow Truck & Coach Manufacturing Co.
ncG1vNJzZmismaKyb6%2FOpmaaqpOdtrexjm9tb2pmZYVwrtSsoKedo6h6p7XNmqWcnV2dsrPA2WapnqyZp7K0ew%3D%3D