The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

HOW FORD TURNED DT&I AROUND
Application of Ford’s basic principle that the objective is simply to get 
the job done without regard to bureaucracy, titles, and red tape changed 
DT&I’s fortunes drastically. Ford’s statement “… a message has to go up 
through a certain line of authority and no man is expected to do anything 

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The Railroads  •  207
without explicit orders from his superior,” reinforces his commentary 
about bureaucracies and departmental barriers in Chapter 6.
* * *
We took over the road in March, 1921. We began to apply industrial prin-
ciples. There had been an executive office in Detroit. We closed that up and 
put the administration into the charge of one man and gave him half of the 
flat-topped desk out in the freight office. The legal department went with the 
executive offices. There is no reason for so much litigation in connection with 
railroading. Our people quickly settled all the mass of outstanding claims, 
some of which had been hanging on for years. As new claims arise, they are 
settled at once and on the facts, so that the legal expense seldom exceeds $200 
a month. All of the unnecessary accounting and red tape were thrown out and 
the payroll of the road was reduced from 2,700 to 1,650 men.
Following our general policy, all titles and offices other than those required 
by law were abolished. The ordinary railway organization is rigid; a message 
has to go up through a certain line of authority and no man is expected to 
do anything without explicit orders from his superior. One morning I went 
out to the road very early and found a wrecking train with steam up, a crew 
aboard and all ready to start. It had been “awaiting orders” for half an hour. 
We went down and cleared the wreck before the orders came through; that 
was before the idea of personal responsibility had soaked in. It was a little 
hard to break the “orders” habit; the men at first were afraid to take respon-
sibility. But as we went on, they seemed to like the plan more and more and 
now no man limits his duties. A man is paid for a day’s work of eight hours 
and he is expected to work during those eight hours. If he is an engineer and 
finishes a run in four hours then he works at whatever else may be in demand 
for the next four hours. If a man works more than eight hours he is not paid 
for overtime—he deducts his overtime from the next working day or saves 
it up and gets a whole day off with pay. Our eight-hour day is a day of eight 
hours and not a basis for computing pay.
The minimum wage is six dollars a day. There are no extra men. We have 
cut down in the offices, in the shops, and on the roads. In one shop 20 men are 
now doing more work than 59 did before. Not long ago one of our track gangs, 
consisting of a foreman and 15 men, was working beside a parallel road on 
which was a gang of 40 men doing exactly the same sort of track repairing 
and ballasting. In five days our gang did two telegraph poles more than the 
competing gang!
The road is being rehabilitated; nearly the whole track has been reballasted 
and many miles of new rails have been laid. The locomotives and rolling 
stock are being overhauled in our own shops and at a very slight expense. 
We found that the supplies bought previously were of poor quality or unfitted 

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208  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
for the use; we are saving money on supplies by buying better qualities and 
seeing that nothing is wasted. The men seem entirely willing to cooperate in 
saving. They do not discard that which might be used. We ask a man, “What 
can you get out of an engine?” and he answers with an economy record. And 
we are not pouring in great amounts of money. Everything is being done out 
of earnings. That is our policy.