Hard Times at Harvester

A long strike derails Archie McCardell's bold plans

Archie McCardell, 54, came to International Harvester in 1977 with the express aim of saving the company. The new chairman of the truck and farm-and construction-equipment giant (1980 sales: $6.3 billion) was recruited from his job as president of Xerox to modernize and expand the firm, which up to then had been mainly family-run. After an initial success, however, McCardell and the company both met with trouble. International Harvester in its 1980 fiscal year lost $397 million and in the first quarter of 1981 another $96.4...