INTERNATIONAL: Dee Kapur brings own brand of boldness to International

By Lyndon Finney
The Trucker Staff

8/10/2007

WARRENVILLE, Ill. — When he was ready for high school, Dee Kapur’s parents made a decision that would have a direct and long-lasting impact on his life — and although they didn’t know it at the time — the American automotive and trucking industry.

And they didn’t even live in the United States.

“I finished high school in India. It was a boarding high school where you are a Catholic boy in an all-male school,” said Kapur, now president of the truck group of International Truck and Engine Corp. “It was up in the mountains and you were sequestered for nine months of the year and your parents would visit maybe two or three days during that time. So you sort of develop a drive to break out in some fashion and do something different.”

And break out he has, deciding to leave his native country as a young man and seek his life’s work in the U.S.

Coincidentally, it was a decision that no doubt was made easier by another aspect of his educational background.

“The first school I went to when I was 4 or 5 was the American International School in Vienna, which is where my dad was stationed back in the 1960s,” Kapur said during an interview in his office at International’s headquarters in this Chicago suburb. “So for a couple of years you are in that environment and you gain some of that belief system and that thinking and so I’m sure a seed was planted way back then.”

He began his post-high school education at the India School of Technology in New Delhi, but after two years received an opportunity to transfer to Stanford University at Palo Alto, Calif.

By that time, he was at least giving thought to a career in the transportation industry, although not necessarily trucking.

“I don’t know about [considering a career in] trucking, but automotive for sure,” he said “I remember that my dad’s younger brother was in the Army in the late 1960s and went and bought an MGTC from the 40s. He thought that was a great sports car and it was at the time in India, where there were very few choices, and he got this off some privileged person. We worked on it and somewhere there a bug was developed. An interest in cars was not hard to develop.”

There weren’t many cars available in India at the time, he said.

“There was a dated Fiat, there was a dated Triumph and there was a car called the Ambassador,” he recalled.

But Time and Life magazines were available and all the brand new, “fantastic” models coming out every year helped whet his appetite for cars.

After graduating from Stanford and then earning his MBA at Carnegie Mellon, he never really gave much thought about returning to India, he says now, because there just weren’t many opportunities there.

But Ford Motor Co. did come calling and Kapur went to work there two months after he earned his master’s.

At Ford, Kapur made an impact on the American automotive market.

Although modest about his accomplishments there, according to a published article from the Wharton School of Business, Kapur ran the most profitable line of vehicles in the U.S. and was part of the group at Ford that helped transform the SUV and pick-up truck from a service vehicle to a lifestyle vehicle.

“There were so many highlights of my career at Ford,” he said. “Off the top of my head two or three come to mind. One, I was stationed in Japan for three or four years (during his lifetime Kapur has lived in seven different countries) and that was a great growing and learning experience for me. I worked in body engineering and seat and switch systems and ended up patenting a few of those. That was a real achievement. And then in the later part of my career in general management [I was] working on the F-150, the Expedition, the Navigator and saw those models become very profitable — back then. They are probably still profitable today, but less so.”

It was a combination of influences that led him to International in 2003.

“Ford at the time had elected to collapse their trucking division, which is where I worked, and integrate it with cars. “We long-time truckers sort of felt like we got the short end of the stick on this one. So there was a little bit of personal anguish. That was one ingredient. I was 48 at the time and thought, ‘well what do I want to do. If I stick around here, I’m going to have to stay here another six or seven years and then I’m in my 50s and it becomes even harder to move.’ Then this opportunity sort of presented itself.”

Through his work at Ford, he’d become acquainted with Daniel Ustian, then head of the engine group and now president and CEO of Navistar International, the parent company of International Truck and Engine.

The two talked about Kapur coming to International, and although there were mixed emotions about leaving Ford, he took the job at International.

International’s history, as much as anything else, sold him on the company.

“I did a little research and I found that the roots of this company went way back,” he said. “Almost like Forrest Gump, this company found itself at crucial historical points when decisive events occurred. I found that really fascinating and enjoyable. Then I looked at what was going on and the opportunity to do something pretty dramatic was there. So I thought, well I’m 48 and I have many good years left, let’s see what we can do.”

But sometimes, a company’s long and storied history can lead to complacency and when he got to International, Kapur found he had some real work to do to return International to its appropriate place in the commercial vehicle market.

“[When I got to International], I found several ingredients I expected to find. It is a very proud company with longtime loyalties and relationships — a huge pool of owners out in the marketplace,” he said. “But I also found a company that had been playing defense for a long time, and probably justifiably so based on the wrenching time of the mid 1980s. And that’s where I said, ‘okay, I could go to a company such as GE that’s hugely prosperous and a steamroller and keep going on that and ride that strength. Or I could go to a company that’s kind of shrunken down a little bit’ and then you can really see what you are made of. You could see what kind of leadership skills you could apply and bring it back to blossom – which I believe is happening.”

Was the company relying too much on its history and traditions?

“Yes, I think for sure there was a piece of that,” Kapur said. “As they gathered themselves up from the quote-unquote ashes of the old International Harvester and started to look at the new world, I think they struggled for a while to figure out what are we about and how do we<