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Changes will come slowly." He plans no big shakeup of the Central staff, is not even bringing along his own private secretary. Instead, among the Central's 100,000 employees, he wants to find a team to help him "build a good foundation for the railroad." Try Research. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Perlman got his start in railroading as an engine-wiper before moving into the engineering end of the business. After a stint in the RFC's railroad division and at the Burlington, he joined the bankrupt D. & R.G. in 1936.
A bug for research, Perlman saved the road $1,000,000 a year by a scientific check on fuels and oil, e.g., he stopped changing oil in his diesels after he found that changes increased engine wear. Another $750,000 was saved by mechanizing track maintenance as far back as 1936, a step that the Central first took last year.
The D. & R.G.'s cost controls were so tight that it knew the exact cost of running each train.
Perlman also developed a "junior board" of bright young employees to keep a constant check on all operations and to make recommendations directly to top management. As a result of his improvements—and war traffic—the road came out of bankruptcy in 1946. After 76 years in which not a nickel was paid in dividends, the railroad made its first payments in 1947. Last year it paid $6 plus a 50% stock dividend on earnings of $14.79 a share.
Improve Service. Perlman will have to be a railroad genius to do that well with the Central. The road's earnings for the first four months of this year were only $29,894, v. $10,269,710 a year ago. The road is also saddled with more than $800 million in long-term debt, one of the biggest loads of any U.S. railroad, and well over $100 million of it will fall due in the next ten years. Operating expenses are high (82.8% of operating revenues last year, v. an average of only 76% for all major railroads), and the passenger deficit, even after operating economies, was $55 million last year. But Perlman is not worried about the passenger deficit. Says he: "The passenger business is like the show window at Saks Fifth Avenue. [By improving the service] you bring in people by the show window." Quiet, modest and diffident as a church usher, Perlman expects to have a free hand in running the Central. Says he firmly: "I would expect to follow the advice of the board in matters like refinancing . . .
But the actual running of the railroad and all its departments I would want to handle." In line with this, Perlman will attend directors' meetings and was promised the next vacancy on the board. But among those who know Bob Young best, there was little doubt that he would be the Central's real boss.