The Importance Of Being Arthur

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In March 1947, after several months of Arthur's badgering, the brothers, who now included George and Harold, convened a meeting. Arthur was elected president. "I'd always been the boss," he says, "but even then we made an agreement to run the company on merit. I told my brothers that if anyone could do a better job, at any time, then he could be boss."

With Arthur in charge, the brothers set out to build their company in earnest. They bought another used truck and, working out of their house on 51st Street, scoured the west bank of the Hudson River for business. The loads were always heavy, the profits usually light. Arthur remembers hauling a 1,000-pound commercial refrigerator 17 miles from West New York to Paterson, N.J., for $4. "We did anything to make a buck," he says.

Only one month after senior management had convened the meeting in the family kitchen, they bought A&P Trucking Corp. for $800 from Albert Amorino, a local trucker who had found himself in financial garage with four loading docks next door to Amorino's house on 59th Street, only blocks away from their own house. They also got two very used trucks, and a new name. Even then, the Imperatores were practical businessmen. Since Amorino had already placed ads for A&P Trucking in an important trade journal, they decided not to let vanity stand in the way of potential customers. Adopting the name proved to be a mixed blessing, though. Eight years later, lawyears for the giant A&P food chain took exception to the obvious similarity. After four years of legal wrangling, the brothers simply added another "A" and became A-P-A Transport Corp.

During its first year in business, the fledgling company grossed $23,000. On the day before Christmas, the brothers brought their trucks back to the 59th Street garage, sent out for pizza, and broke out a bottle of Four Roses to celebrate their success. A few days later, the roof fell in. Two big snowstorms in a row were too much for the old garage roof to bear. "Fourtunately, it didn't do too much damage to our trucks," Arthur says, "but we worked most of that winter without a roof. It was so cold the toilets froze and we had to run next door to Amorino's house."

The next four years were filled with 16-and 18-hour days. Tiny A-P-A had been swept up in the great scheme of things. The pent-up demand of the post-World War II economy was exploding; the interstate highway system was expanding; and the trucking industry became a new frontier. "It was," Arthur once said in a speech, "a shoestring, bootstraps, seat-of-the-pants, call-it-what-you-will industry."

When the brothers had more trucks than a cramped terminal could handle, they parked them in the street and worked into the night by the light from Coleman lanterns. "It was brutal, physical work," Arthur says. "We worked like animals." At times the pace was so fierce, Arthur would comb the local bars looking for help. But very few men could work to Arthur's expectations and inevitably that would trigger his genetic code.

One day in the early '50s, Arthur spotted some of his men lounging around swapping jokes when they should've been loading one of his trucks. Arthur ran down the loading docks grabbing fistfuls of change from his pants pockets. When he reached the men, he threw the change at them and screamed, "Here, you sons of bitches. If you want my money for nothing, take it, take it all."

His fury reached its peak in the spring of 1952. A-P-A had just completed work on a new, 8,000-square-foot terminal that would serve as the nucleus of what is, to this day, the company's main terminal and corporate headquarters. Almost simultaneously, A-P-A was unionized by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. "This single event," Arthur says, "started a new era for the company."

Previously, Arthur had told union officials that he simply couldn't afford to pay union pay scales and fringe benefits. He said that he would accept the labor agreement when he could, but that if the union forced the issue in the meantime, he would shut down. "Let's not kid ourselves," Arthur says, "it was inevitable. In those days, you couldn't operate in this part of the country without the union. No union, no company."

But for the first time in A-P-A's history, Arthur's irresistible will was being challenged by an immovable object, and Arthur couldn't accept it. He was specifically enraged over what he says was a drive by the workers to "run the jobs themselves and victimize the employer. I can empathize with the feelings of the men now, but not then. I wasn't giving enough then. I was wild. I had to do it. I had to build the company."

The atmosphere grew increasingly suspicious and potentially violent. "We'd walk around giving each other the eye," Arthur says. "I'd overreact, then they'd overreact. We set up stock waves."

The shock waves quavered dangerously for the next three years. "It was nose to nose and every day," Arthur says. "They were very combative times." Then on April 12, 1955, union members launched the first in a series of wildcat strikes. "Yes, I was shocked," Arthur says. "I was damn wild."

One of the issues that caused the first strike, Arthur says, was driver refusal to work on the docks in emergencies. "But," he says, "it could have been anything. Things were very tense." That first strike lasted only a day because Arthur confronted the strikers at the front gate of the terminal and told them that if they didn't return to work they were all fired. But on the day after Labor Day, the men walked out again. Clearly, Arthur's earlier ultimatum hadn't worked. And clearly, if Arthur was to control the destiny of A-P-A and live with the union at the same time, he'd have to find another way.

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