Managers, he frequently repeated, do things right—while leaders do the right thing. “My mandate in these jobs has never been to be Mr. Popularity.”

Nobody can bullshit him,” said Hargrove in 2017. “Not the management, not the union, not the workers.” Harrison knew their jobs. That gave him credibility in the field, but it also created angst among employees.

No detail was too small for Harrison. Even the company ball cap got a makeover. Instead of black with white letters, it shifted to company colors, blue and gold.

Individuals like Hunter Harrison are rare. They are singular in their talents, possessing laser-like focus and an atomic-level understanding of their businesses. By dint of starting at the bottom, questioning the status quo, and enduring backbreaking effort, they can slide into a niche that few others occupy. As a result, they represent

The flip side of the railroad genius was dismissiveness and distaste for corporate protocol. Harrison had little patience for boards. Put simply, they were a pain, a waste of time and money. They didn’t increase shareholder value or improve the operating ratio (OR), the key metric for a railroad that’s constantly scrutinized by investors.

Like he had done at CN, Harrison also visited the mail room, a place he believed sent profound signals about a company.

“He can be, sometimes I think, probably too tough on people.” His point was that while it was one thing to maximize returns for shareholders, there was an array of stakeholders that had to be considered. Among others, employees fell into that category.

He’d come to the conclusion that if you said yes to everything the customer wanted, you wouldn’t make any money. That approach would help him make enormous profits in later years, but it would also eventually result in criticism that would hound him.

Harrison, though, knew human nature and was toughest to work for when the railroad ran well. The boss worried that his people would get complacent. “When things were bad, it’s when he was most supportive,” Creel said.