The Story of Morry Taylor & Titan International莫里•泰勒与泰坦国际的故事

Editor’s Note: Morry Taylor, the chairman of Titan International, spoke at Lessiter Media’s two national conferences in January 2025 in Louisville.  Known as “the Grizz” for his ‘bear-like’ presence – replete with candor and a “call it like he sees it” approach —Taylor has a storied career that began in tool and die manufacturing before becoming a manufacturer’s rep in the heavy-duty wheel business. Following his rise and the eventual acquisition of Titan Wheel International from Firestone, he gained national attention as a GOP presidential candidate in 1996, an experience he chronicled in his bold book Kill All the Lawyers — And Other Ways to Fix the Government. In its last completed fiscal year in 2023, Titan International had done $1.8 billion in sales.

编者按：泰坦国际董事长Morry Taylor于2025年1月在路易斯维尔举行的Lessiter Media两次全国会议上发表了讲话。泰勒因其“熊一样”的存在而被称为“灰熊”，他充满了坦率和“像他看到的那样称呼它”的方法，泰勒的职业生涯始于工具和模具制造，之后成为重型车轮业务的制造商代表。随着他的崛起和最终从Firestone收购Titan Wheel International，他在1996年作为共和党总统候选人引起了全国的关注，他在大胆的著作《杀死所有律师——以及修复政府的其他方法》中记录了这段经历。在2023年完成的上一个财政年度，Titan International的销售额为18亿美元。

Following his presentation, I got my signed copy of Trump: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, which he and co-author Dale Buss published in 2024 prior to the 2024 presidential elections. Since past histories were so popular with our readership, we sought, and received, Taylor’s permission to excerpt from the book. What follows here is unedited and in Morry’s own words, as it appear in the book, which is available for purchase on Amazon here.  – Mike Lessiter, editor/publisher

在他的演讲之后，我拿到了我签名的《特朗普：好、坏、丑》，这是他和合著者戴尔·巴斯在2024年总统选举前于2024年出版的。由于过去的历史在我们的读者中很受欢迎，我们寻求并获得了泰勒的许可，可以摘录这本书。以下内容未经编辑，用Morry自己的话来说，就像这本书中出现的那样，可以在亚马逊上购买Mike Lessiter，编辑/出版商

By Morry Taylor, excerpted from 2024 book Trump, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly:

作者：Morry Taylor，摘自2024年出版的《特朗普：好、坏、丑》一书：

To know me, you need to know where I came from. None of us get where we are entirely by ourselves. The generations that went before us laid down a foundation, and we walk on it, and build on it, and hopefully we leave things better for the next generation to build on themselves. So my story really doesn't begin with me.

要了解我，你需要知道我从哪里来。我们谁也不能完全靠自己到达目的地。在我们之前的几代人奠定了基础，我们在上面行走，在上面建设，希望我们能为下一代留下更好的东西，让他们自己建设。所以我的故事真的不是从我开始的。

My grandparents made it through the Great Depression. To most people living today, that's an accomplishment that can't really be grasped.

我的祖父母挺过了大萧条。对于今天生活的大多数人来说，这是一项无法真正掌握的成就。

We might read about how tough things were then and how little they had to get by on, but when people today have closets overflowing with clothes they'll never wear, pantries stuffed with food, and three cars in the garage, it’s difficult to comprehend the kind of hardship the whole country went through in those days.

我们可能会读到当时的情况有多么艰难，他们过得有多艰难，但当今天的人们衣橱里塞满了他们永远不会穿的衣服，食品储藏室里塞满了食物，车库里有三辆车时，很难理解当时整个国家所经历的困难。

I learned a lot from who my forebears were and what they accomplished. I learned the values of perseverance, fortitude, and making much out of little. For example, my father, who was the first Maurice Taylor, was the youngest of four siblings, with an older brother and two older sisters.

我从我的祖先身上学到了很多，以及他们所取得的成就。我学会了坚持不懈、坚韧不拔和少花钱多办事的价值观。例如，我的父亲是第一个莫里斯·泰勒，是四个兄弟姐妹中最小的一个，有一个哥哥和两个姐姐。

They were all born in Detroit, my dad in 1921. But they barely knew their own father: Just before the Great Depression started, when Dad was three or four years old, his own father, my grandfather, just left the family-he basically disappeared. This was incredibly hard on my dad and, of course, the whole family.

他们都出生在底特律，我的父亲在1921年。但他们几乎不认识自己的父亲：就在大萧条开始之前，当爸爸三四岁的时候，他自己的父亲，我的祖父，刚刚离开了这个家庭，他基本上消失了。这对我父亲，当然还有整个家庭来说都是非常困难的。

Older relatives took in my dad's older siblings, but he was sent to a farm. My grandmother got him room and board with a farmer, so he left home at eight years old because his mother simply couldn't care for his material needs during the worst economy this nation had ever experienced. There was no way for her to put food in the bellies of four children, much less her own. To help out, Dad did chores on the farm, for his unofficially adoptive parents.

年长的亲戚收留了我爸爸的哥哥姐姐，但他被送到了农场。我祖母给他找了一个农民的食宿，所以他八岁就离开了家，因为在这个国家经历过的最糟糕的经济时期，他的母亲根本无法满足他的物质需求。她无法给四个孩子的肚子装食物，更不用说她自己的了。为了帮忙，爸爸在农场为非正式的养父母做家务。

Titan International Chairman Morry Taylor with Lessiter Media's Mike Lessiter prior to the first of Taylor's two presentations to dealers and farmers in Louisville in January 2025.

2025年1月，泰勒在路易斯维尔向经销商和农民做了两次演讲中的第一次，在此之前，泰坦国际董事长莫里·泰勒与莱斯特媒体的迈克·莱斯特一起做了演讲。

Mom was born in 1923 and didn't have an easy, carefree youth either. Her mother became sick and died in the hospital when Mom was about thirteen years old. Her father was an Irish firefighter who drank a lot. As the oldest of her siblings, without any supportive and reliable parents, my mom stepped in to fill that role with her younger siblings.

妈妈出生于1923年，也没有一个无忧无虑的青春。她的母亲在大约13岁时生病并在医院去世。她的父亲是一名爱尔兰消防员，经常饮酒。作为她最年长的兄弟姐妹，没有任何支持和可靠的父母，我妈妈用她的弟弟妹妹来填补这个角色。

My parents never talked about how they met; I never knew. I was born on August 28, 1944. Before my birth, Dad was drafted into the U.S. Army for the war effort and shipped out. He went to the Philippines to fight the Japanese, and he served in the Army for more than a year. Meanwhile, Mom lived with Grandma Taylor in Detroit.

我父母从不谈论他们是怎么认识的；我从来不知道。我出生于1944年8月28日。在我出生之前，爸爸被征召入伍参加战争，然后被运出。他前往菲律宾与日本人作战，并在陆军服役一年多。与此同时，妈妈和泰勒奶奶住在底特律。

After Dad returned stateside in late 1945, he worked as a toolmaker in Detroit, where the industrial infrastructure was about to return full-time to making cars again as the war drew to a close. Having learned the trade at night while he was a teenager at Ford's drafting and apprentice school in downtown Detroit, before the war broke out he started a business to make the toolings you put into molds and presses. After he returned from World War Il and for several years, he operated his little tool-and-die shop in Pontiac, Michigan, north of Detroit, with just another guy or two.

1945年底，爸爸回到美国后，在底特律当了一名工具制造商，随着战争的结束，底特律的工业基础设施即将重新全职生产汽车。在战争爆发前，他十几岁时在底特律市中心的福特起草和学徒学校学习了这门手艺，晚上开始做生意，制造你放入模具和压力机的工具。他从第二次世界大战回来后，在底特律以北的密歇根州庞蒂亚克，和一两个人一起经营着他的小工具和模具店。

Things changed when the Korean War started in 1950. Dad told friends that he wanted to get away from big cities because he had been in Japan and knew what could happen to them — and their populations during war. So in 1951, shortly after my brother, Fred, was born, Dad moved the family across lower Michigan a couple hundred miles to Charlevoix, a city near the "pinkie" of the Michigan mitten, on Lake Michigan.

1950年朝鲜战争爆发后，情况发生了变化。爸爸告诉朋友，他想离开大城市，因为他去过日本，知道战争期间他们和他们的人口会发生什么。所以1951年，在我哥哥弗雷德出生后不久，爸爸举家穿过密歇根州下城几百英里，来到密歇根湖上密歇根手套“小指”附近的查勒沃瓦。

Dad looked for work opportunities with his brother, and they found two Army Quonset huts they could use. That was where they set up shop. However, they were unprepared for the intensity of the winter and its impact on those huts: One night they got three feet of snow, and one of the huts caved in.

爸爸和他的兄弟一起寻找工作机会，他们找到了两间可以使用的陆军昆塞特小屋。那是他们开店的地方。然而，他们对冬天的强度及其对这些小屋的影响毫无准备：一天晚上，他们下了三英尺厚的雪，其中一间小屋坍塌了。

My dad learned from people from nearby Ellsworth, a town of about 300 people, that he could borrow $35,000 for a loan at 7 percent interest to construct a little building and build the company safely against the snows of northern Michigan. That was a lot of money back in the 1950s, but my father and uncle went ahead and did it. We moved to Ellsworth in 1952.

我父亲从附近埃尔斯沃斯镇（一个约有300人的小镇）的人那里了解到，他可以借3.5万美元，以7%的利息贷款，建造一座小建筑，并在密歇根州北部的雪地上安全地建造公司。在20世纪50年代，这是一大笔钱，但我父亲和叔叔还是这么做了。1952年，我们搬到了埃尔斯沃斯。

I loved being raised in a small town, what might be called a village today. It was a wonderful place to spend my childhood. Plenty of people prefer big cities and their obvious opportunities, which are in much shorter supply "out in the sticks." But there are many advantages to a small-town upbringing.

我喜欢在一个小镇长大，今天可以称之为村庄。那是一个度过我童年的好地方。很多人更喜欢大城市和他们明显的机会，这些机会在“偏远地区”的供应要少得多。但小城镇的教育有很多优势。

For one thing, it's really safe. Part of my sense of growing up feeling secure in my person was simply being an American kid in the 1940s and 1950s. But another part was due to growing up in a small town. People didn't lock their doors at night, and children were allowed to explore all over town, on foot, on our bikes, without parents or townspeople really having to worry about what they were doing or what was being done to them.

首先，它真的很安全。我成长过程中感到安全的一部分原因，就是在20世纪40年代和50年代，我是一个美国孩子。但另一部分原因是在一个小镇长大。人们晚上不锁门，孩子们可以步行、骑自行车探索整个城镇，父母或市民真的不必担心他们在做什么，也不必担心别人对他们做了什么。

We could go to a friend's house, find someone to play with, and then wander around without supervision. Even as kids, we had so much freedom. Even if our parents didn't trust us, they knew they could depend on the other people in town to keep an eye on us and to inform them right away if we were doing something we shouldn't be.

我们可以去朋友家，找个人一起玩，然后在没有监督的情况下四处闲逛。小时候，我们有很多自由。即使我们的父母不信任我们，他们也知道他们可以依靠镇上的其他人来监视我们，并在我们做了不应该做的事情时立即通知他们。

With sort-of apologies to Hillary Clinton, it was the non-woke version of It Takes a Village. Everybody knew everybody else, so it was kind of like having a family of hundreds of people all living around you. Another advantage of this is that friends I've had since nearly infancy are still my buddies.

带着对希拉里·克林顿的歉意，这是《it Takes a Village》的未醒版本。每个人都认识其他人，所以这有点像有一个几百人的家庭住在你周围。这样做的另一个好处是，我从小就有的朋友仍然是我的好朋友。

Life in a small town is quiet, a characteristic you never fully appreciate until you spend time in the big city. In Ellsworth, you could look up at the night sky and understand why our galaxy is called the Milky Way; in the city, you might be able to count the stars you see at night on two hands if you're lucky and half of them aren't just planes flying by. In and around a small town, nature has a beauty that is hard to deny.

小镇的生活很安静，只有在大城市度过一段时间，你才能完全欣赏到这一特点。在埃尔斯沃斯，你可以仰望夜空，了解为什么我们的星系被称为银河系；在城市里，如果你幸运的话，你可能会用两只手数出晚上看到的星星，其中一半不仅仅是飞过的飞机。在小镇内外，大自然有一种难以否认的美丽。

While maintaining my appreciation of living in a small town, as I grew up, I began to take on a different perspective on my parents. It was one of growing appreciation. I began to really understand what it means to work hard and provide for a family. I grew to see that my father did the best he could, and he worked very hard. When I was growing up, all he did was work. For the first 15 years of my life, he never took a vacation— he just worked. That's how he got ahead in his business.

在保持对生活在小镇的欣赏的同时，随着我的成长，我开始对父母有不同的看法。这是一种日益增长的欣赏。我开始真正理解努力工作和养家糊口的意义。我逐渐意识到，我父亲已经尽了最大的努力，他工作非常努力。在我成长的过程中，他所做的一切都是工作。在我生命的前15年里，他从不休假，他只是工作。他就是这样在生意上取得成功的。

While pursuing that work ethic, he also was modeling it for me — and expecting me to pick it up. When I was 12, Dad had me working during every break from school, whether it was for the summer, during Christmas break, or some other time off. Even following after-school activities, he expected me to come and work with him.

在追求这种职业道德的同时，他也在为我树立榜样，并希望我能接受。我12岁的时候，爸爸让我在放学后的每个休息时间都工作，无论是暑假、圣诞假期还是其他休息时间。即使在课后活动之后，他也希望我能来和他一起工作。

So every summer, I worked eight hours a day, 40 hours a week. Besides working, my father also expected me to train my brothers. He paid me 37.5 cents an hour, which equaled $15 a week. (I also got my first taste of how much the government takes out in taxes when I saw that my first paycheck was only $11.90!)

所以每年夏天，我每天工作8个小时，每周工作40个小时。除了工作，我父亲还希望我训练我的兄弟。他每小时付给我37.5美分，相当于每周15美元。（当我看到我的第一份薪水只有11.90美元时，我也第一次尝到了政府税收的滋味！）

As a kid, it was hard to work while my friends were out playing or splashing at the local swimming hole. But as I grew up, I saw the practical work experience and expectation of a work ethic as real strengths.

小时候，当我的朋友们在当地的游泳池玩耍或嬉戏时，我很难工作。但随着我的成长，我把实际的工作经验和对职业道德的期望视为真正的优势。

I attended elementary through high school a block from our house. After graduation, I enrolled at Michigan Tech Univ. in 1962 and went to classes there, but only for one semester-it was just too cold for me, in Houghton, almost at the northern tip of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as it juts into Lake Superior.

我在离我们家一个街区的地方上小学到高中。毕业后，我于1962年就读于密歇根理工大学，并在那里上课，但只有一个学期，霍顿对我来说太冷了，霍顿几乎位于密歇根州上半岛的北端，因为它伸入苏必利尔湖。

I was ready for a warmer climate, so a buddy and I went to Florida, doing common-labor jobs around Miami and enjoying the sunshine for a while. But the next summer, 1963, we came back to Michigan and to Ellsworth. I did some local jobs and then enrolled in Northwestern Community College in Traverse City. I took accounting courses, given my interest in math, and graduated with a two-year associate's degree.

我已经准备好迎接更温暖的气候，所以我和一个朋友去了佛罗里达州，在迈阿密周围做普通的劳动，享受了一段时间的阳光。但第二年夏天，1963年，我们回到了密歇根州和埃尔斯沃斯。我在当地做了一些工作，然后就读于特拉弗斯城的西北社区学院。考虑到我对数学的兴趣，我修了会计课程，并获得了两年的副学士学位。

During that time, there were summer cabins in a development called Baker's Acres, on Lake Michigan. All through college, I rented a cabin and hosted poker nights, where we'd play what we called Burn-because you would just put your money in and burn through it. It was a version of Texas Hold "Em.

在那段时间里，密歇根湖上一个名为Bakers Acres的开发项目里有夏季小屋。在整个大学期间，我租了一间小屋，举办了扑克之夜，在那里我们玩我们所谓的“Burn”，因为你只需把钱放进去烧掉。这是得克萨斯州扑克的一个版本。

Then I got my best winter gear and went back to Michigan Tech to graduate with a four-year degree. But the more important "certification" I gained there was an imprimatur in entrepreneurship.

然后我拿到了最好的冬季装备，回到密歇根理工大学，获得了四年制学位。但我在那里获得的更重要的“认证”是创业方面的认可。

You see, entrepreneurship isn't the same as hard work, and it isn't just capabilities, and it isn't just inspiration, and it isn't just risk-taking. True entrepreneurship requires all four. Already by around 20 years old, I fully knew I possessed capabilities and that I could work hard. I still had to find out if I could produce all four of these attributes of entrepreneurship, and in a winning combination.

你看，创业并不等同于努力工作，它不仅仅是能力，不仅仅是灵感，不仅仅是冒险。真正的创业需要这四点。大约20岁的时候，我就完全知道我有能力，我可以努力工作。我仍然需要弄清楚我是否能同时具备创业精神的这四个特征，并将其结合起来。

I'd observed my father, and he clearly also had capabilities and a work ethic to match. But I'd seen him come up short in the inspiration and risk-taking categories, and I keenly desired to make sure I didn't do the same thing.

我观察了我的父亲，他显然也有能力和职业道德。但我看到他在灵感和冒险方面表现不佳，我非常希望确保自己没有做同样的事情。

Because he was so skilled at manipulating metal and engineering things that worked, periodically Dad would get feelers from inventors who wanted him to help them realize their inventions and partner with them. For example, the guy who invented pop-top aluminum soda cans and had a patent on the design lived in Traverse City and asked my father for $20,000 to $25,000 to make a die to manufacture a new idea for a more convenient can, and presumably to partner with him from there.

因为他非常擅长操纵金属和工程上可行的东西，爸爸会定期从发明家那里得到试探，他们希望他帮助他们实现他们的发明并与他们合作。例如，发明了易拉罐铝汽水罐并拥有该设计专利的人住在特拉弗斯城，他向我父亲索要2万至2.5万美元来制作一个模具，以制造一种更方便的罐子的新想法，并可能从那里与他合作。

My dad figured all people had to do to open a can of pop was use a key or a can opener, and he didn't think it made sense for manufacturers to add cost to the cans by installing a pop-top. So he passed on it, and the inventor became a millionaire by selling his design to Illinois Tool Works.

我爸爸认为，人们打开一罐汽水只需要使用钥匙或开罐器，他认为制造商通过安装汽水盖来增加罐头成本是没有意义的。于是他把它传了出去，发明家通过将他的设计卖给伊利诺伊工具厂成为了百万富翁。

Another time, the developer of the McCullough motorized chainsaw wanted my dad to do the tooling for making links in the chain; Dad passed. A third opportunity slipped through his better judgment when the developer of what would become famous ski resorts in Michigan, Boyne Highlands and Boyne Mountain, asked Dad to fabricate a T-bar for pulling skiers up the hill. He was going to give my father a percentage of revenues for that device. But Dad said, "What would you want to do that for? Just walk back up the hill."

还有一次，麦卡洛电动链锯的开发者想让我爸爸做在链条上制作链环的工具；爸爸过去了。当密歇根州著名的滑雪胜地博因高地和博因山的开发商要求爸爸制作一个T型杆来拉滑雪者上山时，他失去了第三次更好的判断。他打算把那台设备的收入分成一部分给我父亲。但爸爸说：“你为什么要那样做？只要走回山上就行了。”

I'm not saying Dad wasn't capable of thinking entrepreneurially and indulging in a bit of risk-taking. One thing he did that worked out is making a die for an outfit that made a new kind of aluminum archery bow that looked like the traditional wood on the outside. It ended up being used to win some world archery championships, and Dad had a bit of skin in that game.

我并不是说爸爸没有创业思维，也没有冒险精神。他做的一件事是为一套服装制作模具，这套服装制作了一种新型的铝制射箭弓，外表看起来像传统的木头。它最终被用来赢得一些世界射箭锦标赛，爸爸在那场比赛中有点冒险。

The difference between my dad and me is that I ended up searching for ways to engage in entrepreneurship and then usually jumping in head-first, counting on my mind and abilities to offset the element of risk. It also helped that I began early as an entrepreneur, before I knew any better!

我和爸爸的不同之处在于，我最终会寻找创业的方法，然后通常会先跳进去，依靠我的头脑和能力来抵消风险因素。这也对我很早就开始创业有所帮助，在我知道任何更好的事情之前！

It all started after I went back to Michigan Tech. I'd internalized the fact that there was no car wash in the area, but the weather was crappy most of the year, creating an acute consumer need that simply wasn't being mer. So I decided to build a car wash. It seemed like a moneymaking idea: identify a need, or a gap in the marketplace, and find a way to fill it. (And if someone else was doing it, find a way to do it better.) I would use this strategy, beginning then and for the rest of my life, to great effect.

这一切都始于我回到密歇根理工大学后。我深刻认识到该地区没有洗车场，但一年中大部分时间天气都很糟糕，这创造了一种强烈的消费者需求。所以我决定建一家洗车店。这似乎是一个赚钱的想法：确定一个需求或市场上的一个缺口，并找到一种方法来填补它。（如果别人在做这件事，找到一种做得更好的方法。）我会从那时开始，在我的余生中，使用这种策略，取得巨大的效果。

But first, I needed a building. I hardly had any money, of course. So 1 went to Morton Buildings, a major local building company, and became a rep for them. That would give me the inside scoop on buildings in the area and a discount on materials if I wanted to do my own construction.

但首先，我需要一栋楼。当然，我几乎没有钱。于是，我去了当地一家大型建筑公司Morton Buildings，并成为了他们的代表。这将为我提供该地区建筑的内幕消息，如果我想自己建造，还可以享受材料折扣。

I also needed land. I was aware that a copper company – mining is a huge industry in the Upper Peninsula-owned about 70 feet of land on the edge of a cliff overlooking where the company had cut through the peninsula for the ease of its shipping. There was nothing there at the time because nobody wanted to build at the edge of a cliff! So they leased me the land.

我也需要土地。我知道一家铜业公司——采矿业是上半岛的一个巨大产业——在悬崖边缘拥有约70英尺的土地，俯瞰着该公司为便于运输而穿越半岛的地方。当时那里什么都没有，因为没有人想在悬崖边缘建造！所以他们把土地租给了我。

Now I had the land and discounted construction materials, but I needed car-wash equipment. I went to a manufacturer of car-wash equipment with the same approach I'd used with Morton: I became their rep so I could get a huge discount if I bought from them.

现在我有了土地和打折的建筑材料，但我需要洗车设备。我去了一家洗车设备制造商那里，采用了与莫顿相同的方法：我成为了他们的代表，这样如果我从他们那里购买，我就可以获得巨大的折扣。

Then I went to a bank and showed them what I had done, and the loan officer was duly impressed. The bank loaned me 100 percent of the amount I had requested, about $7,000, to build the car wash. Bankers like clean cars, too.

然后我去了一家银行，向他们展示了我所做的一切，贷款员对此印象深刻。银行借给我的钱是我要求的100%，大约7000美元，用于修建洗车场。银行家们也喜欢干净的汽车。

My inventiveness continued. I got some students from Michigan Tech's civil-engineering department to lay out the car wash. I bought the lumber, but the tricky part was going to be the cement. Some of my civil-engineering buddies helped me figure out that I needed to order 10 yards of cement, but that would be the easy part. I wanted them also to help me level it, put drains in, and other stuff you need for a car wash.

我的创造力还在继续。我让密歇根理工大学土木工程系的一些学生来布置洗车场。我买了木材，但棘手的部分是水泥。我的一些土木工程伙伴帮我弄清楚我需要订购10码的水泥，但这是容易的部分。我希望他们也能帮我把它弄平，装上排水管，以及洗车所需的其他东西。

We would need to move and spread the cement with hand carts, and I came up with those. We were ready for the cement trucks to arrive. Meanwhile, I went to a local brewery to buy two kegs of beer to reward my friends for their work. While I was away, the cement trucks showed up a little early at the construction site. "Where do you want us to drop the cement?" the drivers asked the Michigan Tech guys standing around.

我们需要用手推车移动和铺水泥，我想出了这些。我们已经准备好迎接水泥卡车的到来。与此同时，我去了当地的一家啤酒厂买了两桶啤酒，以奖励我的朋友们所做的工作。我不在的时候，水泥卡车提前一点到达了建筑工地。“你想让我们把水泥扔到哪里？”司机们问站在周围的密歇根理工大学的人。

Stupidly, these juniors and seniors in engineering simply pointed to the site and told the drivers to dump the cement there. It was no skin off the drivers noses, so they divided the cement into two piles, dropping five yards on one side of the site and five yards on the other. They got a student's initials on the paperwork and drove off.

愚蠢的是，这些工程系的大三和大四学生只是指着现场，告诉司机把水泥倒在那里。司机们毫不留情，所以他们把水泥分成两堆，一堆掉在场地的一边五码，另一堆掉五码。他们在文件上签下了学生的姓名首字母，然后开车离开了。

When I came back, I was apoplectic. I couldn't believe what I was seeing: two big pyramids of cement sitting nowhere in particular, rapidly drying and setting. Barking, I asked these guys what the hell they were doing studying engineering if they were going to let this happen. After using some more choice words on my friends— I can be, um, a bit salty— I grabbed tools, and so did they, and we tried to level it out even as the cement kept getting harder, second by second. We did our best to get it laid out and smooth, and that would be my carwash.

当我回来的时候，我中风了。我简直不敢相信我所看到的：两座巨大的水泥金字塔，没有特别的地方，很快就会干燥和凝固。吠叫，我问这些家伙，如果他们想让这种情况发生，他们到底在做什么——学习工程学。在对我的朋友们使用了更多的选择词之后——我可能会，嗯，有点咸——我抓起工具，他们也一样，我们试图把它弄平，即使水泥一秒一秒地变得越来越硬。我们尽了最大努力把它布置得井井有条，那就是我的洗车。

It worked out okay. The place certainly became popular right away. On Saturdays in the spring, there would be well over a mile of cars lined up, coming to get a carwash. We had coin boxes for people to pay for their carwashes, and they filled up so fast that I had to keep coming back during the day to empty them.

结果还好。这个地方很快就流行起来了。春天的星期六，会有一英里多的汽车排队来洗车。我们有投币箱供人们支付洗车费，它们装得太快了，我白天不得不不断回来清空它们。

The next year, the owners of the gas station across the street offered me $16,000 for the car wash — to a college senior. I thought about accepting their offer, but I figured that if I kept this thing running for two years, I would make that much money as income from the car wash.

第二年，街对面加油站的老板给了我16000美元的洗车费——给一位大四学生。我考虑过接受他们的提议，但我想，如果我把这件事经营两年，我会赚那么多钱作为洗车的收入。

So I kept it.

所以我保留了它。

I did hire a guy to bring the money in for me because I was busy with school, but I found out he was siphoning off some of the cash. I put a stop to it, and sometime after graduating from Michigan Tech, I sold the car wash. But not for a profit.

我确实雇了一个人帮我把钱带进来，因为我忙于学业，但我发现他抽走了一些现金。我阻止了它，在密歇根理工大学毕业后的某个时候，我卖掉了洗车店。但不是为了盈利。

With my degree in mechanical engineering in tow, in the spring of 1968 I conducted a job search, setting up appointments with various manufacturers in the Detroit and Chicago areas and getting five or six interviews. I landed a job with General Motors and went to work for GM in Saginaw, Michigan, as a plant engineer.

1968年春天，我带着机械工程学位进行了一次求职，与底特律和芝加哥地区的多家制造商预约了工作，并接受了五六次面试。我在通用汽车公司找到了一份工作，然后去了密歇根州萨吉诺的通用汽车公司担任工厂工程师。

The job was boring — too much bureaucracy —  but I was glad for the position. When I had a chance to improve the plant's efficiency, I took it as an opportunity to showcase my capabilities. For example, I came up with an idea for removing a bottleneck in the steel-melting operation, to improve quality and get more parts per hour. All they had to do was move an employee break area to another part of the plant. I figured out how they could recover the cost of reconstruction, about $150,000, in just a week by creating better and more production.

这份工作很无聊——官僚主义太多了——但我对这个职位很满意。当我有机会提高工厂的效率时，我把它当作展示自己能力的机会。例如，我提出了一个想法，即消除炼钢操作中的瓶颈，提高质量，每小时获得更多零件。他们所要做的就是将员工休息区搬到工厂的另一部分。我想出了如何通过创造更好、更多的生产，在短短一周内收回重建成本，约15万美元。

This was in 1968. Plant management loved the idea, but the proposal had to go up the chain of command. So the big boss invited me to meet with the top executives in Saginaw. Here I was, this young guy sitting in there, amid a bunch of older guys in more expensive suits except for another man, who was probably about 27 years old, a couple of years older than me. Presumably in part because he was the whiz kid and didn't want to be shown up by a whizzier kid, this guy said GM couldn't afford to execute my idea because the company had used up their money and would have to wait for the next cycle!

那是1968年。工厂管理层很喜欢这个想法，但这个提议必须逐级上报。所以大老板邀请我去萨吉诺见高层管理人员。我坐在这里，一个年轻人坐在那里，周围是一群穿着更昂贵西装的老人，除了另一个男人，他可能大约27岁，比我大几岁。这可能部分是因为他是个天才，不想被一个更天才的孩子出现，这个人说通用汽车无法执行我的想法，因为公司已经花光了他们的钱，必须等待下一个周期！

A select number of conference attendees received Morry Taylor's book, "Trump: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly" in exchange for questions posted to the businessman/author in Louisville.

部分与会者收到了莫里·泰勒的书《特朗普：好、坏、丑》，以换取向路易斯维尔的商人/作家提出的问题。

But another guy said, "Well, let's just take it from our capital." More suggestions came up, but every time, the finance kid would shoot them down. Then my boss, a man named Mr. Poole, decided he'd seen enough-and that I was right. My idea clearly was brilliant enough to shine through the B.S. the finance kid was trying to cover it with.

但另一个人说：“好吧，让我们从我们的首都拿走吧。”更多的建议出现了，但每次，金融孩子都会把他们打倒。然后我的老板，一个叫普尔先生的人，决定他已经看够了，我是对的。我的想法显然很聪明，足以通过金融孩子试图掩盖它的学士学位。

"You guys argue about it, but do it," he said. "The payback comes in less than a week. Just charge it to something." As I sat there, shocked, Mr. Poole walked to the door. He looked at me and said, "You gonna listen to this crap too, Taylor?" So I jumped up and went with him. We went to the maintenance manager and got an agreement to buy the material for the construction project. Mr. Poole said, "They will be so happy after they see the results. You will have to work the weekend to make this happen. You get time and a half on Saturday, and two times on Sunday."

他说：“你们争论不休，但还是去做吧。”。“回报不到一周就要来了。只要记点什么就行了。”我坐在那里，惊呆了，普尔先生走到门口。他看着我说：“泰勒，你也要听这些废话吗？”于是我跳起来和他一起去了。我们去找维修经理，并达成协议，为建设项目购买材料。普尔先生说：“他们看到结果后会很高兴的。你必须在周末工作才能实现这一点。你周六有一点半的时间，周日有两次。”

Sure enough, within two weeks all the construction materials came together, and we made the changes over the weekend, then reworked it. On Monday, things were up and running. No one at the upper levels knew. It worked just as I thought it would, and I knew it was saving GM millions of dollars a year, but I never got any accolades for it.

果然，在两周内，所有的建筑材料都集中在一起了，我们在周末进行了更改，然后进行了返工。周一，一切都开始运行了。上层没有人知道。它的效果和我想象的一样，我知道它每年为通用汽车节省数百万美元，但我从未因此获得任何荣誉。

This experience taught me a major life lesson: Sometimes recognition will come, and other times it won't — and it's in those moments that you have to be satisfied with doing what's right.

这段经历教会了我一个重要的人生教训：有时会得到认可，有时则不会——正是在那些时刻，你必须对做正确的事感到满意。

I was making $13,000 in salary at the time, which seemed alright to me then. However, the job was not only boring, it was also dirty. I would go into the plant in the morning wearing a nice, white shirt and slacks, and when I came up from the plant floor, I'd be covered in black from head to toe, my shirt filthy with soot and dust. Everyone in engineering would get a good laugh at me for being such a mess, but we worked in a foundry, and I knew there was no way to understand how it worked if you didn't get dirty.

当时我的薪水是13000美元，当时我觉得还可以。然而，这份工作不仅无聊，而且肮脏。我会在早上穿着一件漂亮的白色衬衫和宽松长裤走进工厂，当我从工厂的地板上站起来时，我从头到脚都是黑色的，我的衬衫上沾满了煤烟和灰尘。工程界的每个人都会嘲笑我这么乱，但我们在一家铸造厂工作，我知道如果你不弄脏，就无法理解它是如何工作的。

Still, the challenges at GM and what I was learning about how industry worked, weren't enough for me. I had gotten married along the way, and my wife at the time was pregnant, so I moved to Detroit and talked to my father. He had always wanted me to work with him, and he still did, so I went to work for my dad. I did that from 1970 until 1972.

尽管如此，通用汽车的挑战和我对行业运作方式的了解对我来说还不够。我一路上结婚了，当时我的妻子怀孕了，所以我搬到了底特律，和父亲谈了谈。他一直想让我和他一起工作，现在他仍然这样做，所以我去为我爸爸工作了。我从1970年到1972年一直这样做。

The problem with working for him, though, is that he had spent so long building his business that the staff always wanted to hear from him directly, so my authority as No. 2 was minimized. At the same time, Dad was in the process of losing his business. As a former staff sergeant, he had been able to get U.S. military business from a general. In the early 1970s, however, the general told my dad to make some modifications in their agreement regarding aluminum prices, and he would get a new contract for business going forward.

不过，为他工作的问题是，他花了这么长时间建立自己的企业，以至于员工们总是想直接听到他的消息，所以我作为二号人物的权威被最小化了。与此同时，爸爸正在失去生意。作为一名前参谋长，他能够从一位将军那里获得美国军事业务。然而，在20世纪70年代初，将军告诉我父亲对他们关于铝价格的协议进行一些修改，他将获得一份新的业务合同。

But that never happened. The general canceled the contract with my dad's company for some reason and went to another supplier even though my father's price was lower. Dad lost a lot of money in this calamity and had to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. His business never recovered.

但这从未发生过。将军出于某种原因取消了与我父亲的公司的合同，并转向了另一家供应商，尽管我父亲的价格更低。爸爸在这场灾难中损失了很多钱，不得不宣布破产。他的生意再也没有恢复。

Before that point, however, in 1972, I'd left Dad's company on the conviction that I needed to take my own path professionally. Things were changing for me personally as well. Soon, I would be going in promising new directions that would set me on a better course for the rest of my life.

然而，在那之前，1972年，我离开了爸爸的公司，因为我相信我需要走自己的职业道路。对我个人来说，情况也在发生变化。很快，我将朝着有希望的新方向前进，这将使我在余生中走上更好的道路。

At 28 years old, I could boast of a wonderful young daughter but had a marriage that wasn't working out. I had married an Italian girl whose father worked in Detroit as a mechanic and whose mother was from England; they were excellent people. But my wife needed a lot of attention, and she didn't understand my business or raising a three-year-old girl, and we got divorced.

28岁时，我可以夸耀自己有一个漂亮的小女儿，但婚姻并不美满。我娶了一个意大利女孩，她的父亲在底特律当机械师，母亲来自英国；他们是优秀的人。但我的妻子需要很多关注，她不了解我的生意，也不了解抚养一个三岁的女孩，于是我们离婚了。

The divorce included an agreement that I would pay her child support for 18 years, and she would have unlimited visitation rights to see our daughter. She moved to California and got a job with the government, and I never saw her again, though my former parents-in-law stayed in touch with their granddaughter — their only grandchild throughout their lives.

离婚协议包括一项协议，我将支付她18年的子女抚养费，她将有无限的探视权来看望我们的女儿。她搬到了加利福尼亚州，在政府找到了一份工作，我再也没有见过她，尽管我的前岳父岳母和他们的孙女——他们一生中唯一的孙子——保持着联系。

Then I met a wonderful young woman who was working in a bank (and could count cash as fast as anybody I'd ever seen!). Michelle and I had lunch one day, and it turned out that she'd been divorced for about a year — and also had a child, a five-year-old son, Anthony. Michelle and I started dating in 1973, and we got married on August 16, 1975. The years later, we had another daughter, Catherine. Today, we have three children and nine grandkids.

然后我遇到了一位在银行工作的优秀年轻女子（她能像我见过的任何人一样快速地数现金！）。有一天，米歇尔和我共进午餐，结果发现她离婚了大约一年，还生了一个孩子，一个五岁的儿子安东尼。米歇尔和我1973年开始约会，1975年8月16日结婚。几年后，我们又有了一个女儿，凯瑟琳。今天，我们有三个孩子和九个孙子。

So in 1975, I had a wonderful woman for a wife, but a family to feed. I had left my father's company a few years earlier but not without remembering this thought: He'd always told me that, in Detroit, if you worked and looked hard enough, you could always find a way to make money, I was a good engineer but better than a so-so sales guy, so here was my strategy: I would try to find used equipment to buy and then hunt down someone who was looking for that kind of equipment.

所以在1975年，我有一个很棒的女人做妻子，但要养活一个家庭。几年前，我离开了父亲的公司，但并非没有记住这一点：他总是告诉我，在底特律，如果你足够努力地工作和寻找，你总能找到赚钱的方法，我是一名优秀的工程师，但比一般的销售人员要好，所以我的策略是：我会试着找到二手设备来购买，然后寻找正在寻找这种设备的人。

“I was a good engineer but better than a so-so sales guy, so my strategy was to find used equipment to buy and then hunt down someone who was looking for that kind of equipment…”

“我是一名优秀的工程师，但比一名一般的销售人员要好，所以我的策略是找到二手设备购买，然后寻找正在寻找这种设备的人……”

I would get in the car, wheel out and stop at machine shops, asking the managers if they were looking for anything to buy or sell. That sounds simple, except everyone was "really busy." So they didn't want to talk with me at about nine out of ten stops. I wouldn't even get by the receptionist in the lobby.

我会上车，下车，在机械店停下来，问经理们是否在找东西买卖。这听起来很简单，只是每个人都“很忙”。所以他们不想在十站中的九站和我说话。我甚至连大厅的接待员都挤不过去。

The second week out, I stopped at a small tool shop and, by luck, met the owner — who was in the lobby. He was a German fellow in his mid-fifties, while I was about 25 years his junior. Per my routine, I asked him if he was looking for any equipment, and to my surprise, he smiled and said, "Yes, a Number 5 Lucas mill."

第二周，我在一家小工具店停了下来，幸运的是，我遇到了店主——他在大厅里。他是个五十多岁的德国人，而我比他小25岁左右。按照我的惯例，我问他是否在找任何设备，令我惊讶的是，他笑着说：“是的，卢卡斯5号磨坊。”

Of course, he was smiling because he figured I would have no idea what that was. But I looked at him and said, "That's a great boring machine. I'm assuming you want one in excellent shape." He looked at me, now a little strangely, and said, "How did you know what I was asking for?"

当然，他笑了，因为他觉得我不知道那是什么。但我看着他说：“这台机器太无聊了。我想你想要一台状态极佳的。”他看着我，现在有点奇怪，说：“你怎么知道我要什么？”

I told him that I'd served my apprenticeship in tool-and-die as well as been certified for welding, and that I was a mechanical engineer to boot. He said, "Really? I'll hire you!"

我告诉他，我不仅获得了焊接证书，还完成了工具和模具的学徒期，而且我是一名机械工程师。他说：“真的吗？我雇你！”

At that moment, I could have taken the conventional path, grateful to have landed a jumping-off point after my father's company, and proceeded along what might have been a safer career path. But I didn't hesitate to tell him that I was starting my own business and, thank you kindly, would prefer to find him his boring mill.

在那一刻，我本可以走传统的道路，感激在我父亲的公司之后找到了一个起点，并沿着一条可能更安全的职业道路前进。但我毫不犹豫地告诉他，我要开始自己的事业，衷心感谢，我更愿意给他找一个无聊的磨坊。

I asked him his price, and he said, "$35,000." I asked, "Would you pay me 5 percent of the sales price?" He agreed; we shook hands; and I was on a mission. I went to shop after shop, and in the second week, I came into a nice-sized place. Again, for some reason, the owner was in the lobby, and I told him of my quest for a Number 5 Lucas mill.

我问他的价格，他说：“35000美元。”我问：“你能付我销售价格的5%吗？”他同意了；我们握了握手；我当时在执行任务。我去了一家又一家商店，第二周，我走进了一个很大的地方。出于某种原因，店主又在大厅里，我告诉他我想要一家卢卡斯5号磨坊。

He had one! And he was willing to sell it at the right price. For him, that was $37,500, because the mill was "like new." I asked him, if I got a buyer, would he pay me a 10 percent sales fee? He offered 7 percent. I told him that, while this was a special machine, it might be difficult to sell at a top price. So he assented to 10 percent and we shook hands.

他有一个！他愿意以合适的价格卖掉它。对他来说，这是37500美元，因为这家工厂“像新的一样”。我问他，如果我有买家，他会付给我10%的销售费吗？他出价7%。我告诉他，虽然这是一台特殊的机器，但可能很难以高价出售。所以他同意了10%，我们握了握手。

I'd made my first sale and figured out how to benefit from both sides of the transaction! Now I was going to need a new bank account, business cards, and paperwork filed with the state. The name of the business would be Maurice M. Taylor Associates LLC.

我做了第一笔交易，并想出了如何从交易双方受益的办法！现在我需要一个新的银行账户、名片和向州政府提交的文件。该公司的名称为莫里斯·M·泰勒联合有限责任公司。

“I would work on commission, selling wheels and machinery, initially to John Deere…”

“我会靠佣金工作，销售车轮和机械，最初是卖给约翰迪尔……”

I leapt into building my own company with a fervor. This country boy was about to show some moxie! I would work on commission, selling wheels and machinery, initially to John Deere. I liked the trade because I knew mechanical stuff, and I learned that I could sell wheels to a corn farmer. Soon, competitors around the world were losing business to me in droves.

我满怀热情地创建了自己的公司。这个乡下男孩正要展示一些魔力！我会靠佣金工作，最初是向约翰迪尔出售车轮和机械。我喜欢这个行业，因为我知道机械方面的东西，而且我知道我可以把轮子卖给玉米种植者。很快，世界各地的竞争对手纷纷把生意输给我。

Then I got a cold call, from a Massey-Ferguson combine plant in Brampton, Ontario, one of the biggest agricultural-equipment manufacturing factories on the continent. Massey-Ferguson was buying steel rims and making steel disks to weld onto the rims for wheels for their combines, but had stopped purchasing them from their supplier because, well, the rims weren't round. Their supplier was named Titan ProForm Ltd., and it was located in an old building in downtown Toronto.

然后我接到了一个来自安大略省布兰普顿的麦赛福格森联合收割机厂的电话，这是非洲大陆最大的农业设备制造厂之一。麦赛福格森正在购买钢圈，并制造钢盘焊接到他们联合收割机车轮的轮辋上，但已经停止从供应商那里购买，因为轮辋不是圆的。他们的供应商名为Titan ProForm有限公司，位于多伦多市中心的一栋旧楼里。

I figured I would try to fix this situation and arbitrage some profit out of it, which is one of the most common approaches in my modus operandi. Because at that moment I was only about 60 miles away in Brampton, I drove to Toronto, walked into the Titan ProForm offices and introduced myself.

我想我会尝试解决这种情况，并从中套利一些利润，这是我工作方式中最常见的方法之一。因为那时我在布兰普顿只有大约60英里远，我开车去了多伦多，走进Titan ProForm的办公室，做了自我介绍。

They let me in to see the purchasing guy, and I immediately witnessed quite a scene that told me a lot about why that plant was making and shipping inferior products. There were four desks in the room, and three of them were occupied by schlumps who clearly were just passing the time. The fourth one had a pile of papers on it, and an occupant of a chair behind it who was the only guy in the room wearing a hat. (He would turn out to be Joe Tannenbaum, who later became a key figure in my career.) He was eating his lunch and reading newspapers.

他们让我进去见采购员，我立刻目睹了一个相当大的场景，告诉我很多关于为什么那家工厂生产和运输劣质产品的事情。房间里有四张桌子，其中三张被显然只是打发时间的笨蛋占据了。第四张桌子上有一堆文件，后面坐着一把椅子，是房间里唯一戴帽子的人。（他就是乔·坦南鲍姆，后来成为我职业生涯中的关键人物。）他正在吃午饭，看报纸。

A select number of conference attendees received Morry Taylor's book, Trump: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly in exchange for questions posted to the businessman/author in Louisville.

部分与会者收到了莫里·泰勒的书《特朗普：好、坏、丑》，以换取向路易斯维尔的商人/作家提出的问题。

Given a minute over their apparent lunch break to explain my unannounced and uninvited presence in their office, I told them I was a manufacturers' rep who’d been visiting various farm-equipment manufacturers, and I knew that Titan ProForm didn't have any of the business from these Original Equipment Manufacturers. The general manager, a Mr. Katz, politely told me that Titan dealt with everyone, and that they didn't need some new manufacturers' rep shilling for them.

在他们明显的午休时间，有一分钟的时间解释我未经宣布和邀请就出现在他们的办公室，我告诉他们，我是一名制造商代表，一直在拜访各种农业设备制造商，我知道Titan ProForm与这些原始设备制造商没有任何业务往来。总经理Katz先生礼貌地告诉我，Titan与每个人都打交道，他们不需要一些新的制造商代表。

I took another look around and concluded that either Mr. Katz was lying or stupid. I told him thanks, left a card and walked out. On my way past the secretary who'd shown me in, she asked why I was there. I told her about the conversation I'd had with Massey-Ferguson about Titan's rims, and that while I knew little about the wheel business per se, I knew something was wrong at Titan somewhere. She laughed and said, "Sure, it's right here."

我再次环顾四周，得出的结论是，要么卡茨先生在撒谎，要么他很愚蠢。我告诉他谢谢，留下一张卡片就走了出去。在我经过带我进去的秘书的路上，她问我为什么在那里。我告诉她我和麦赛福格森关于泰坦轮圈的谈话，虽然我对车轮业务本身知之甚少，但我知道泰坦有些地方出了问题。她笑着说：“当然，就在这里。”

I kept digging into the obvious problems at Titan and finally was able to pounce on the situation. I learned among other things that Titan's main competition was the Electric Wheel Company in Quincy, Illinois. The Electric Wheel plant there had gone on strike, so everybody producing rims for combines had to put their equipment up on blocks until the strike was over.

我一直在深入研究泰坦的明显问题，最终能够抓住形势。我了解到，泰坦队的主要竞争对手是伊利诺伊州昆西的电动轮公司。那里的电动轮厂已经罢工了，所以每个为联合收割机生产轮辋的人都不得不把他们的设备放在木块上，直到罢工结束。

“Deere, one of the biggest agricultural-equipment makers in the world, was desperate to get some wheels to put on their combine chassis — and get them out of their factory…”

“Deere是世界上最大的农业设备制造商之一，迫切希望在他们的联合收割机底盘上安装一些轮子，并将其运出工厂……”

John Deere, one of the biggest agricultural-equipment makers in the world, was desperate to get some wheels to put on their combine chassis so they could sell these expensive machines and get them out of their factory. So I made my way to their top factory guy and asked him if I could get a deal with him if I could promise to deliver him some badly needed wheels. He said yes — he’d order 200 wheels from me, and he didn't care where I got them, Titan or somewhere else, but they’d damned well better be round!

约翰迪尔是世界上最大的农业设备制造商之一，迫切希望在他们的联合收割机底盘上安装一些轮子，这样他们就可以卖掉这些昂贵的机器并将其运出工厂。于是，我找到了他们工厂的负责人，问他，如果我能答应给他一些急需的轮子，我是否可以和他达成协议。他答应了——他会向我订购200个轮子，他不在乎我在哪里买的，泰坦还是别的地方，但它们最好是圆形的！

It was the biggest order I had gotten to date as a rep. I threw all my stuff in the car, told Michelle I'd see her in a couple of weeks and drove the four hours from Detroit to the Titan plant near Toronto, getting there at six a.m. on a Monday so that I could personally supervise the formation and assembly of these precious wheels.

这是我作为代表迄今为止接到的最大订单。我把所有的东西都扔进了车里，告诉米歇尔几周后我会见到她，然后从底特律开车四个小时到多伦多附近的泰坦工厂，在周一早上六点到达那里，这样我就可以亲自监督这些珍贵车轮的形成和组装。

And that's exactly what I did. I rolled up my sleeves as never before, showed the Titan plant workers exactly what they needed to do, step by step, right out on the factory floor with them — how to weld them; what to paint on the wheels; and what not to paint. All the while, I fought through language and skill barriers, heat, and the intense stakes involved.

这正是我所做的。我前所未有地卷起袖子，向泰坦工厂的工人们展示了他们需要做什么，一步一步地，在工厂车间里和他们一起——如何焊接它们；在车轮上涂什么；还有什么不该画。一直以来，我都在克服语言和技能障碍、高温和激烈的利害关系。

“I showed the Titan plant workers exactly what they needed to do, step by step, right out on the factory floor with them — how to weld them; what to paint on the wheels; and what not to paint…”

“我向泰坦工厂的工人们展示了他们需要做什么，一步一步地，和他们一起在工厂车间——如何焊接它们；在轮子上涂什么；不涂什么……”

Soon after, word of the ruckus I'd caused had gotten upstairs, and Tannenbaum himself appeared. Turns out he was the owner, and Katz, the guy who'd told me I wasn't needed at Titan, was his nephew.

不久之后，我引起骚动的消息传到了楼上，坦南鲍姆本人也出现了。原来他是泰坦的老板，而Katz，那个告诉我泰坦不需要我的人，是他的侄子。

Tannenbaum closely followed my actions that day in helping his company take advantage of the opportunity with Deere that I had created for them and myself.

Tannenbaum密切关注我那天的行动，帮助他的公司利用我为他们和我自己创造的与迪尔的机会。

“I stopped home long enough to take a shower and kiss Michelle, and then I dashed off to Deere to enjoy the fateful moment of overseeing the delivery of 200 wheels we'd put together within a couple of weeks…”

“我在家呆了足够长的时间，洗了个澡，亲吻了米歇尔，然后我冲向迪尔，享受着监督我们在几周内组装好的200个轮子交付的决定性时刻…”

We managed to put together 200 beautifully round wheels within a couple of weeks, and they were shipped to Deere in the Quad Cities. I stopped home long enough to take a shower and kiss Michelle, and then I dashed off to enjoy the fateful moment of overseeing the delivery of the wheels to Deere. The boss there was thrilled, I got more orders from Deere, and Maurice M. Taylor Associates was on its way. After that performance, I was already Tannenbaum's unofficial right-hand man, and I started repping more wheel manufacturers.

我们设法在几周内组装了200个漂亮的圆形车轮，并将其运往四城的迪尔。我在家里停了足够长的时间，洗了个澡，亲吻了米歇尔，然后我匆匆离去，享受着监督向迪尔交付车轮的决定性时刻。那里的老板很兴奋，我收到了迪尔的更多订单，莫里斯·M·泰勒公司也在路上。在那场演出之后，我已经是Tannenbaums的非正式得力助手，我开始代表更多的车轮制造商。

After a while, I was able to get maximum leverage out of my performance and my growing reputation. In the early 1980s, I honed in on the fact that the Electric Wheel plant was owned by Firestone, and that it had about 65 percent of the U.S. tractor-wheel business at that time. But tractor sales were declining, and Firestone wanted to find a buyer or close the UAW-represented plant in Quincy, where the union wouldn't consider contract concessions.

过了一段时间，我能够从我的表现和不断增长的声誉中获得最大的杠杆作用。在20世纪80年代初，我发现电动轮工厂归凡士通所有，当时它拥有美国拖拉机车轮业务约65%的份额。但拖拉机销量正在下降，凡士通希望找到买家或关闭美国汽车工人联合会在昆西代表的工厂，因为工会不会考虑合同让步。

I saw an opportunity for both Titan and me to make some money and do a long-term deal to take advantage of how Firestone was abandoning Electric Wheel and the market.

我看到了Titan和我都有机会赚钱，并达成一项长期协议，以利用凡士通放弃电动轮和市场的机会。

Tannenbaum and I had a great and rather unusual relationship. The Orthodox Jewish community is a very close-knit one, and Tannenbaum was a devoted and prominent member of it. For example, Joe gave millions of dollars to Orthodox causes, and one time many hundreds of people from the Jewish community and beyond feted Tannenbaum at a huge birthday party in the Sheraton Hotel in Toronto.

Tannenbaum和我的关系很好，也很不寻常。正统犹太社区是一个非常紧密的社区，Tannenbaum是其中一位忠诚而杰出的成员。例如，乔为正统事业捐赠了数百万美元，有一次，数百名来自犹太社区及其他地区的人在多伦多喜来登酒店的一个大型生日派对上招待了Tannenbaum。

But I was a goy. He appreciated my candor with him about his business but, more than that, he told me he liked my moxie. Business moxie was something that his three offspring didn't have and couldn't give to Titan, so when Joe found it in me, he treasured it — and me. In fact, Joe would often jokingly insist that one or the other of my parents-or both — were secretly Jewish. Sometimes he would muddy my identity at some risk to himself.

但我是个小妖精。他很欣赏我对他的坦诚，但更重要的是，他告诉我他喜欢我的莫西。商业魔咒是他的三个孩子没有的，也不能送给泰坦的，所以当乔在我身上找到它时，他珍惜它——还有我。事实上，乔经常开玩笑地坚持说，我父母中的一方或双方——都是秘密的犹太人。有时，他会冒着风险混淆我的身份。

For example, frequently, Joe would host prominent rabbis in his office. One time, the chief rabbi from Israel was in Toronto visiting Joe, along with some associates, and he was meeting with them there. I had to bust in because of some emergency in the plant, and I apologized to the esteemed clerics, but I said, "Joe, here's the situation." I described it to him and made sure he authorized me to go fix it. So Joe sat there, also apologizing, and told these rabbis that my mother was Jewish! The man in charge of Tannenbaum's foundation also apologized for me and reassured them there were no gentiles in that room.

例如，乔经常在他的办公室里接待著名的拉比。有一次，来自以色列的首席拉比和一些同事在多伦多拜访乔，他在那里与他们会面。因为工厂里的一些紧急情况，我不得不闯进来，我向尊敬的神职人员道歉，但我说：“乔，情况就是这样。”我向他描述了情况，并确保他授权我去修理。于是乔坐在那里，也道歉了，并告诉这些拉比我母亲是犹太人！Tannenbaums基金会的负责人也为我道歉，并向他们保证那个房间里没有异教徒。

I admit I take some pride in the relationship I had with Joe. A true giant of Canadian industry, he was at one point the biggest landowner in Ontario. I'm a gentile yet I worked essentially as his right-hand man in the United States for several years, happily and effectively. That was a testament to how good a mentor he was, and how good a man, and I guess a testament to how eager I was to learn. Or maybe he just liked the kosher sausage and bread I'd take to him when I went to various project sites.

我承认我为我和乔的关系感到骄傲。他是加拿大工业的真正巨人，曾一度是安大略省最大的土地所有者。我是一名非犹太人，但我在美国工作了几年，基本上是他的得力助手，快乐而有效。这证明了他是一个多么好的导师，一个多么优秀的人，我想这也证明了我多么渴望学习。或者，也许他只是喜欢我去各个项目现场时带给他的犹太香肠和面包。

Titan International Chairman Morry Taylor with Lessiter Media's Mike Lessiter prior to the first of Taylor's two presentations to dealers and farmers in Louisville in January 2025.

2025年1月，泰勒在路易斯维尔向经销商和农民做了两次演讲中的第一次，在此之前，泰坦国际董事长莫里·泰勒与莱斯特媒体的迈克·莱斯特一起做了演讲。

I got it. I was the only guy Joe had who really understood what went on in factories. When I walked through the Electric Wheel plant in Quincy, I didn't have some grand vision for what it could become or how to turn it around. It was simple: I would call up Firestone and see how much they wanted for the closed plant. On my drive home to Michigan, I pulled over for gas in Indiana and called Firestone in Akron and asked an executive if he was the person who could make the decision on the plant, because I had the guy who could write the check.

我明白了。我是乔唯一一个真正了解工厂情况的人。当我走过昆西的电动轮工厂时，我对它会变成什么样子或如何扭转局面并没有什么宏伟的愿景。很简单：我会打电话给凡士通，看看他们对关闭的工厂有多想要。在我开车回密歇根州的路上，我在印第安纳州停下来加油，打电话给阿克伦的凡士通公司，问一位高管是否可以对工厂做出决定，因为我有一个可以写支票的人。

The Firestone guy told me $6 million was the price, not a dollar less. This was December 1982. The next week, I drove to Toronto and told Joe he should go look at this plant because someone else might buy it. I chartered a little plane and we flew to Quincy the following week.

Firestone的家伙告诉我，600万美元是价格，不是少一美元。那是1982年12月。第二周，我开车去多伦多，告诉乔他应该去看看这家工厂，因为别人可能会买。我租了一架小飞机，第二周我们飞往昆西。

We went on a plant tour. After we left the Quincy plant, Joe told me to offer Firestone $10 million cash. I told Joe I already had a deal to buy it for just $6 million! He smiled and hit me in the arm. "Great!" he said, and Joe and I made a deal on the flight back: When they sold us the fac-tory, I got $4 million, plus he signed me to a 15-year contract to run the factory, and my company would do all the sales of the stuff made there for commission.

我们参观了工厂。我们离开昆西工厂后，乔让我向凡士通提供1000万美元现金。我告诉乔，我已经以600万美元的价格买下了它！他微笑着打了我的胳膊。“太好了！”他说，乔和我在回程的航班上达成了一项协议：当他们把工厂卖给我们时，我得到了400万美元，加上他与我签订了一份为期15年的工厂经营合同，我的公司将负责那里生产的所有产品的销售，并收取佣金。

Now, Maurice M. Taylor Associates was on its way again!

现在，莫里斯·M·泰勒公司又上路了！

I put together Titan by using a keen eye for how I could turn around troubled businesses, initially working with my mentor and sponsor, Joseph Tannenbaum, and later growing the company steadily into an industry heavyweight.

我以敏锐的眼光看待如何扭转陷入困境的企业，最初与我的导师和赞助商Joseph Tannenbaum合作，后来将公司稳步发展成为行业重量级企业，从而组建了Titan。

In fact, in the seven years after Joe bought it, the business, at first renamed Can-Am, for "Canadian-American," grew to $80 million in annual sales. In 1990, I executed a leveraged buyout with Tannenbaum and Masco Industries, which was headed by my neighbor, Dick Manoogian, and President Bill Billig. Joe got to take some cash out of the company. The deal gave him 40% ownership, me 40%, and Masco 20% in the new company.

事实上，在乔买下它后的七年里，这家公司最初更名为Can-Am，意为“加拿大裔美国人”，年销售额增长到8000万美元。1990年，我与Tannenbaum和Masco Industries进行了杠杆收购，Masco Industries由我的邻居Dick Manoogian和总裁Bill Billig领导。乔不得不从公司拿走一些现金。这笔交易给了他40%的所有权，我40%，马斯科20%的所有权。

In 1991, our business was going well, so the company, Titan Wheel International, borrowed some additional money from our banking group, and I bought Joe's shares back. Let's just say that, on his original $6-million investment, Tannenbaum got back $47 million in just seven years. At that point, my ownership was two-thirds of the company, while Masco's was one-third.

1991年，我们的业务进展顺利，所以Titan Wheel International公司从我们的银行集团借了一些额外的钱，我买回了Joes的股票。让我们说，在他最初的600万美元投资中，Tannenbaum在短短七年内就收回了4700万美元。当时，我持有公司三分之二的股份，而Mascos持有三分之一的股份。

At the beginning of 1992, Titan wanted to buy another company, but our banks wanted us to wait a year. I went to Masco and asked Manoogian and Billig what they thought. Manoogian noted that Masco owned a wheel company in California that did around $20 million in business a year, and that his company would sell it to Titan for book value-about $5 million. Masco would take a note so we didn't have to go to the banks for the money, and the deal would put Titan's sales at over $100 million, which would be good for going public.

1992年初，Titan想收购另一家公司，但我们的银行想让我们等一年。我去找马斯科，问马诺吉安和比利他们怎么想。Manoogian指出，Masco在加利福尼亚州拥有一家车轮公司，年营业额约为2000万美元，他的公司将以约500万美元的账面价值将其出售给Titan。Masco会记下来，这样我们就不必去银行取钱了，这笔交易将使Titans的销售额超过1亿美元，这对上市来说是件好事。

Just over 90 days later, Titan Wheel International went public on Nasdaq. One year later, we moved to the New York Stock Exchange, where the company's shares reside to this day. I sold some of my shares for a total of about $40 million.

仅仅90天后，Titan Wheel International在纳斯达克上市。一年后，我们搬到了纽约证券交易所，公司的股票至今仍在那里。我卖出了一些股票，总共约4000万美元。

But back to those first days with our takeover of the Electric Wheel plant in Quincy. At that point, I already was prepared to take the "new" Titan to the next level. For one thing, I knew my way around a factory by then. As a former toolmaker, welder, and industrial engineer, if there was one thing I understood, it was metal. I learned from Joe and from Tony Soave, another neighbor in Detroit who was an enterprising entrepreneur who knew how to build companies, how to look at the value of assets in a different light, starting with the Electric Wheel plant in Quincy.

但回到我们收购昆西电动轮工厂的最初几天。在那一点上，我已经准备好将“新”泰坦带到下一个层次。首先，到那时我已经熟悉了工厂的路线。作为一名前工具制造商、焊工和工业工程师，如果有一件事我理解的话，那就是金属。我向乔和底特律的另一位邻居托尼·索瓦学习，他是一位有进取心的企业家，知道如何建立公司，如何从不同的角度看待资产价值，从昆西的电动轮工厂开始。

When I first toured it, the silence that had taken over that huge industrial operation was eerie – all you could hear were pigeons and the constant low hum of the electric transformers that were still on. Looking that over, once I came to the conclusion that, worst-case scenario, there would be a heap of stuff I could sell for at least $6 million, the rest was gravy. Then I had to figure out how many people I needed to hire to start producing wheels again.

当我第一次参观它时，笼罩着这座巨大工业区的寂静令人毛骨悚然——你能听到的只有鸽子和仍在运行的变压器的持续低沉的嗡嗡声。仔细看，一旦我得出结论，最坏的情况是，会有一堆我可以卖到至少600万美元的东西，剩下的都是肉汁。然后，我必须弄清楚我需要雇佣多少人才能再次开始生产车轮。

With an eye toward the value of used but idle equipment that no one else ever quite seemed to see the way I did, I bought up other closed factories, too. Yet the market for heavy-duty wheels kept shrinking in those days as small-holder farmers gave way to corporate types who bought up their farms, were much more efficient, and reduced demand for tractor wheels. I was consolidating this business.

着眼于二手但闲置的设备的价值，其他人似乎从来没有像我这样看到过，我也买下了其他关闭的工厂。然而，在那些日子里，重型车轮的市场一直在萎缩，因为小农户让位给了收购农场、效率更高、对拖拉机车轮需求减少的公司类型。我正在巩固这项业务。

A select number of conference attendees received Morry Taylor's book, Trump: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly in exchange for questions posted to the businessman/author in Louisville.

部分与会者收到了莫里·泰勒的书《特朗普：好、坏、丑》，以换取向路易斯维尔的商人/作家提出的问题。

Another crucial thing I understood was that, in the heavy-duty wheel business, unlike the automotive industry, things changed very little from year to year. Manufacturers just kept making the same designs, so tractor and truck wheels required little in terms of product evolution. I didn't need to worry about buying idle dies that simply would be outdated the next year. As factories failed, I made low-ball offers, took them over, and made them part of Titan.

我理解的另一个关键点是，在重型车轮业务中，与汽车行业不同，每年的变化很小。制造商一直在制造相同的设计，因此拖拉机和卡车车轮在产品进化方面几乎不需要什么。我不需要担心购买明年就会过时的闲置模具。随着工厂倒闭，我提出了低价收购，接管了它们，并将其作为泰坦的一部分。

Around the time of our initial public offering, Titan also acquired our first tire plant, a facility in Tennessee that made wheels and tires for ATVs and lawn and garden equipment. This gave me my first real, integrated look at tractor wheels and tires together, and I realized that the technology behind both kinds of devices had advanced little over the course of 30 to 40 years. So I put together a team of engineers, including myself, to start working on a new approach to tires we called low sidewall (LSW).

在我们首次公开募股前后，Titan还收购了我们的第一家轮胎厂，这是一家位于田纳西州的工厂，为ATV以及草坪和花园设备生产车轮和轮胎。这让我第一次真正、全面地了解了拖拉机车轮和轮胎，我意识到这两种设备背后的技术在30到40年的时间里几乎没有进步。因此，我组建了一个包括我自己在内的工程师团队，开始研究一种新的轮胎方法，我们称之为低侧壁（LSW）。

The idea behind LSW tires was both simple and revolutionary: They help reduce what's called power hop and road lope, as well as soil compaction, according to research we conducted over the years. Titan has proven that the company's low-sidewall wheel and tire assemblies can save farmers up to 6 percent in efficiency and up to 5 percent in yield gains.

LSW轮胎背后的想法既简单又具有革命性：根据我们多年来进行的研究，它们有助于减少所谓的动力跳跃和道路坡度，以及土壤压实。Titan已经证明，该公司的低侧壁车轮和轮胎组件可以为农民节省高达6%的效率和高达5%的产量。

So significant were these gains that, by the end of the 1990s, we were able to persuade Caterpillar to become the first original-equipment manufacturer to offer factory-installed equipment with LSW tires, specifically its line of skid steers. Then we struck an agreement with Goodyear to get a national tire brand behind LSWs. Our sales really took off then.

这些成果意义重大，到20世纪90年代末，我们成功说服卡特彼勒成为第一家提供工厂安装的LSW轮胎设备的原始设备制造商，特别是其滑移转向机系列。然后我们与固特异达成协议，让一个全国性的轮胎品牌支持LSW。那时我们的销售额真的很高。

Interestingly, many years later, car makers would adopt what is essentially LSW technology to create what they call low-profile tires they put on luxury vehicles because of how slick they look. There are some performance benefits for passenger vehicles from low-profile tires, too, though not nearly to the degree they make tractors more efficient. And a lot of people hate them because if you can't drive correctly and you scrape a curb, it doesn't just scuff up a tire-it scratches up your pricey wheel.

有趣的是，多年后，汽车制造商将采用实质上的LSW技术来制造他们所谓的低调轮胎，因为它们看起来很光滑。低断面轮胎也为乘用车带来了一些性能优势，尽管还没有达到使拖拉机更高效的程度。很多人讨厌它们，因为如果你不能正确驾驶，刮伤了路缘，它不仅会擦伤轮胎，还会划伤你昂贵的车轮。

Besides overhauling old factories and redesigning the wheel, a major part of what I was able to accomplish in running an industrial company boiled down to human relations.

除了翻修旧工厂和重新设计轮子外，我在经营一家工业公司时所能取得的主要成就归结为人际关系。

I made it pretty clear from the start of Titan that I don't suffer B.S. in negotiations. Take what happened after we bought a Pirelli Armstrong tire plant in Des Moines in 1994. The 680 members of the United Rubber Workers there had struck the plant, but I was in no mood to coddle them. Instead, I pulled a Shawn Fain, two decades before the United Auto Workers president theatrically threw Stellantis contract proposals in a garbage can in the summer of 2023 in the lead-up to the union's costly six-week strike against the Detroit Three automakers.

从《泰坦》一开始，我就明确表示，我在谈判中不会受到B.S.的影响。以1994年我们在得梅因收购倍耐力阿姆斯特朗轮胎厂后发生的事情为例。那里的680名橡胶工人联合会成员袭击了工厂，但我没有心情溺爱他们。相反，我拉了一个Shawn Fain，20年前，美国汽车工人联合会主席在2023年夏天戏剧性地将Stellantis的合同提案扔进了垃圾桶，为工会对底特律三大汽车制造商进行为期六周的罢工做准备。

"I made it pretty clear from the start of Titan that I don't suffer B.S. in negotiations ... The union had two thick documents, each of them a three- or three-and-a-half-inch binder, one on economics and one on health benefits. They shoved them over to me. I picked them up and dumped them in a trash can..."

“从《泰坦》一开始，我就明确表示，我在谈判中不会受到B.S.的影响……工会有两份厚厚的文件，每份都是三英寸或三英寸半的活页夹，一份是关于经济的，一份关于健康福利的。他们把它们推给了我。我把它们捡起来扔进了垃圾桶……”

You see, the URW local had a bargaining committee of something like 19 people, and on our side, it was just our labor lawyer and me sitting there. The union had two thick documents, each of them a three- or three-and-a-half-inch binder, one on economics and one on health benefits. They shoved them over to me. I picked them up and dumped them in a trash can. The union boss said to me, "It took us 35 years to get all of that!" I responded, "Another way to say that is that it took you 35 years, you're broke, and that's why Pirelli sold you!"

你看，URW当地有一个大约19人的谈判委员会，在我们这边，只有我们的劳工律师和我坐在那里。工会有两份厚厚的文件，每份都是三英寸或三英寸半的活页夹，一份是关于经济的，一份关于健康福利的。他们把它们推到我面前。我把它们捡起来扔进垃圾桶。工会老板对我说：“我们花了35年才得到这一切！”我回答说：“另一种说法是，你花了35岁，你破产了，这就是倍耐力卖掉你的原因！”

We settled the strike more or less on my terms. I offered profit-sharing in a contract proposal to the union.

我们或多或少按照我的条件解决了罢工问题。我在向工会提出的合同提案中提出了利润分成。

Our U.S. tire plants are unionized, but our wheel plants aren't. You know why? We treat people right. For instance, profit-sharing gave people more skin in the game and the ability to turn hard work and productivity into more income for them and their families. I think the union made a mistake in not going for the profit-sharing I offered.

我们的美国轮胎厂有工会，但我们的车轮厂没有。你知道为什么吗？我们对待人是对的。例如，利润分享让人们在游戏中有了更多的皮肤，并有能力将辛勤工作和生产力转化为他们和家人的更多收入。我认为工会不接受我提出的利润分成是错误的。

I still believe that, ultimately, unions get in the way of the relationship between even good employers and employees. However, we made sure our people felt a certain loyalty to those who sign their paychecks, not to the union bosses who take dues out of their paychecks.

我仍然相信，工会最终会阻碍好雇主和雇员之间的关系。然而，我们确保我们的员工对那些在工资单上签字的人有一定的忠诚，而不是对从工资单中扣除会费的工会老板。

For example, we insisted on having regular all-workforce meetings, and the union brass hated them and tried to discourage people from coming. But we made them mandatory: If you missed a certain number of them, we'd fire you. These meetings were invaluable for our relationships with the rank-and-file. People could ask questions of management, and they could all get to see one another.

例如，我们坚持定期举行全体员工会议，工会高层讨厌这些会议，并试图阻止人们来。但我们强制要求：如果你错过了一定数量的，我们就解雇你。这些会议对我们与普通员工的关系非常宝贵。人们可以问管理问题，他们都可以互相见面。

When I was around, I was always there, in the back of the room. People knew it, and they'd often want me to answer questions. "Are we going to make any money this year?" That was a common one, because each factory had its own financial benchmarks, and if the operation itself passed them, profit-sharing kicked in. I was always honest about where they stood on that, even if it was a tough year.

当我在的时候，我总是在那里，在房间的后面。人们知道这一点，他们经常希望我回答问题。“我们今年会赚钱吗？”这是一个常见的问题，因为每家工厂都有自己的财务基准，如果运营本身通过了这些基准，利润分享就会开始。即使今年很艰难，我也总是诚实地告诉他们他们的立场。

I played it straight with employees. Like Trump, I've always specialized in telling it like it is — and demonstrating the thick skin to match. At one point at Titan, I walked around plants in a t-shirt produced by the union that had a picture of me and said, "Have you seen the village idiot?" I swapped them a "Grizz" shirt for that. I've been called everything under the rainbow. You've got to learn to live with it.

我直接与员工打交道。和特朗普一样，艾维总是擅长如实地讲述，并展示出与之匹配的厚脸皮。有一次在泰坦，我穿着工会生产的印有我照片的t恤在工厂里走来走去，说：“你看到那个村里的白痴了吗？”我换了一件“Grizz”衬衫。我被称为彩虹下的一切。你必须学会忍受它。

It really helped that I knew how to do any job in a stamping plant or tire plant. That way, you know what's going on in your factories. I would walk the line and have hourly people explain the job to me if I didn't get it right away. Some people aren't real smart, but they'll beat your ass doing their job day in and day out once they learn it.

我知道如何在冲压厂或轮胎厂做任何工作，这真的很有帮助。这样，你就知道工厂里发生了什么。如果我没有马上得到这份工作，我会排队让计时工向我解释。有些人不是很聪明，但一旦他们学会了，他们会日复一日地做他们的工作。

I would stop at a guy running a press, take my jacket off, and hand him my phone and say, "Here, you're me for a while" Id have my white shirt on; I'd tuck my tie in; and if for some reason, grease came off the machine and hit me in the chest, I didn't stop. I just kept going.

我会在一个经营媒体的人面前停下来，脱下外套，把手机递给他，说：“给你，你等我一会儿。”我会穿上白衬衫；我把领带扎好；如果出于某种原因，油脂从机器上掉下来，打在我的胸口，我没有停下来。我只是继续走。

Otherwise, they'd look at you and laugh about it.

否则，他们会看着你，嘲笑你。

"Our wheel plants aren't unionized. We treat people right. Profit-sharing gave people more skin in the game and the ability to turn hard work and productivity into more income for them and their families..."

“我们的车轮厂没有工会。我们对待人是正确的。利润分享让人们在游戏中有了更多的机会，并有能力将辛勤工作和生产力转化为他们和家人的更多收入……”

I do have a lot of sympathy for the impulse among American workers that leads them to vote in a union. For one thing, they don't make front-line supervisors like they used to. Until the last few decades, the men and women leading production workers on the factory floor typically had risen from among them, having proven excellent at what they did and deserving promotion so they could help others achieve higher levels of productivity in the interests of all.

我确实非常同情美国工人在工会投票的冲动。一方面，他们不像以前那样成为一线主管。直到过去几十年，工厂车间领导生产工人的男女通常都是从他们中间提拔出来的，他们表现出色，值得晋升，这样他们就可以帮助他人实现更高水平的生产力，造福所有人。

But starting in the 1960s, the automakers and other giant conglomerates like General Electric decided they had to "professionalize factory-floor supervision, so they required college degrees even for the people on the front line. Then they got even more ridiculous and decided that to become a general foreman in a factory required a master's degree. How idiotic. The recent generations of factory management started out with no idea of what it's like to work in one. But that's what happened, and it has continued.

但从20世纪60年代开始，汽车制造商和通用电气等其他大型企业集团决定，他们必须“使工厂车间监督专业化，所以即使是一线人员也需要大学学位。然后他们变得更加荒谬，决定成为工厂的总领班需要硕士学位。太愚蠢了。最近几代工厂管理人员一开始不知道在一个工厂工作是什么感觉。但事实就是这样，而且这种情况还在继续。

Along with my factory workers, I had some important management principles for the white-collar people, too. One of my principles came from how I handled it when people got in over their heads. If someone was doing a great job of running a $15-million group and we promoted him to head a $50-million operation, but then it became obvious that he wasn't going to cut it, I had my own way of dealing with it.

和我的工厂工人一样，我也为白领们制定了一些重要的管理原则。我的原则之一来自于当人们进入时我是如何处理的。如果有人在管理一个价值1500万美元的集团方面做得很好，我们提拔他领导一个价值5000万美元的业务，但很明显他不会削减，我有自己的处理方式。

If a guy screwed up badly in a leap like that, many CEOs would have fired him. But that's not the approach I took. Implicitly acknowledging part of the problem was that we in top management had misjudged him, I always called him in and said, "This isn't working out. So we're going to put you back where you were without cutting your pay. But you won't get a bonus."

如果一个人在这样的跳跃中搞砸了，许多首席执行官都会解雇他。但这不是我采取的方法。我含蓄地承认问题的一部分是我们高层管理人员误判了他，我总是打电话给他说：“这行不通。所以我们会在不减薪的情况下把你放回原来的位置。但你不会得到奖金。”

Titan International Chairman Morry Taylor with Lessiter Media's Mike Lessiter prior to the first of Taylor's two presentations to dealers and farmers in Louisville in January 2025.

2025年1月，泰勒在路易斯维尔向经销商和农民做了两次演讲中的第一次，在此之前，泰坦国际董事长莫里·泰勒与莱斯特媒体的迈克·莱斯特一起做了演讲。

I did that about 20 times when I was running Titan, and 18 of those people stayed with the company and did better. And after about six months, almost every one of them came up to me and said something like, "I really appreciate what you did. I was in way over my head." Even the wives of 15 of them came and thanked me because these guys were taking the stress home with them when they weren't making it.

当我经营泰坦时，我这样做了大约20次，其中18人留在了公司，做得更好。大约六个月后，他们几乎每个人都走过来对我说：“我真的很感激你所做的一切。我受够了。”甚至他们中的15个的妻子也来感谢我，因为这些人在无法承受压力的时候把压力带回家了。

Among the best choices I made as head of Titan was picking Paul Reitz, the current CEO, as my successor, who started out as CFO. Paul treats people with respect, gives them support, and does what you're supposed to do when you're in charge. I still serve as chairman and put up with all the crap that the ESG (environmental, social, governance) crowd is throwing at directors of public companies these days, but Paul is running the show.

作为Titan的负责人，我做出的最佳选择之一是选择现任首席执行官Paul Reitz作为我的继任者，他最初是首席财务官。保罗尊重他人，给予他们支持，并在你掌权时做你应该做的事情。我仍然担任董事长，忍受ESG（环境、社会、治理）人群这些天对上市公司董事的所有废话，但保罗正在主持大局。

Under Paul, Titan has continued to prosper, and Titan followed up our record sales and earnings of 2022 with another strong year in 2023 and a promising start to 2024.

在保罗的领导下，Titan继续蓬勃发展，继2022年创纪录的销售额和收益之后，Titan在2023年又取得了强劲的业绩，2024年开局良好。

"I walked around plants in a t-shirt produced by the union that had a picture of me and said, "Have you seen the village idiot?" I swapped them a "Grizz" shirt for that..."

我穿着工会生产的印有我照片的t恤在工厂里走来走去，说：“你看见那个村里的白痴了吗？”？“我换了一件‘Grizz’衬衫……”

But the real hero of my accomplishments is my wife, Michelle. We talked every day through all those years of building the company, and she would support whatever I was doing, while at the same time handling everything on the home front. "Blondie," as I called Michelle, would never tell me about the problems she was dealing with in the house, with the kids, the neighbors, whatever, because, as she put it, "He can't do a damn thing about it, so I'll just wait until he gets home." Her attitude was to press on and keep going.

但我成就的真正英雄是我的妻子米歇尔。在建立公司的这些年里，我们每天都在交谈，她会支持我所做的一切，同时处理家庭方面的一切。我称米歇尔为“金发女郎”，她从不告诉我她在家里、孩子们、邻居等方面遇到的问题，因为正如她所说，“他对此无能为力，所以我就等他回家。”她的态度是坚持下去。

We hardly have ever had conflict. She stays positive, and I try to keep her happy. The Lord has blessed us and our family.我们几乎从未有过冲突。她保持积极的态度，我试着让她开心。上帝保佑我们和我们的家人。