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From then on Keller's progress was all up the hill. Shortly after Chrysler left General Motors, "K. T." became executive vice-president of Chevrolet but when Chrysler hired him for Chrysler Corp.'s general manager in 1926 he was glad to chuck his job and go to work for the man he admired most in the motor business. And when Walter Chrysler stepped out of the presidency of his company four years ago he had only one candidate for the job: serious, barrel-chested Dodge President K. T. Keller. For Keller had shown more than production genius and executive ability in the crowded, exciting days after 1928 that had added Plymouth to the line and given Chrysler a formidable competitor to Ford and Chevrolet. Competent, profane, full of studious curiosity, he had handled the complex problems of the Dodge plant—sales, labor, the thousands of trivia that pour over the desk of a big corporation executive—in his unruffled stride. In Walter Chrysler's mind there was no doubt that K. T. Keller had the mental heft to steer a motor giant which in the year just past had sold $516,830,333 worth of automobiles, had given employment to 59,000 workmen.
He had also shown two other qualities that the hard-riding U. S. motor industry requires of all its topflight executives: the stamina to hold up under hard work, the singleness of purpose that eventually makes "the plant" the be-all and end-all of their existence.
In eleven years K. T. Keller has had only three vacations (fishing). He has cut out figure skating, at which he once excelled, because it took too much time. A rounding paunch has been the penalty, more time for work the reward. He plays golf abominably ("I get quite a thrill if I break 100"), avoids bridge for more than a tenth of a cent "because it gets too serious and I don't have the time to devote to the game."
His playhouse is "the plant." When he is in Detroit he gets to the office at 9 o'clock in the morning, gets out of it as soon as he can get through the mail, to go through one of the factories and to spend long hours in the engineering department. When he is on the road visiting the Chrysler factories outside Detroit, he spends his nights on Pullmans, his days in inspection and in whooping up the sales force. He hasn't had a drink since 1927 when his doctors assured him it was bad for his health, and he seldom goes to his church (Methodist) because he has a hard time staying awake.
When he goes home at night to his Elizabethan house in swank Palmer Woods, he likes to stay there and read (history and biography) and before bedtime to go for a walk. Sometimes on his walks he meets husky President Bill Knudsen of General Motors or Director Pete Martin of Ford, both neighbors, but he seldom sees them otherwise. He is too busy and so are they.