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Edward Burkhardt

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Entrepreneur

The Resume

    (July 23, 1938- )
    Born in Kenilworth, Illinois
    Honors in Industrial Administration at Yale University
    Vice President of Marketing (and later Operations) at Chicago and North Western Transportation
    Founder of Wisconsin Central Limited
    Founder and chairman of Rail World (incorporated 1999)
    Primary shareholder of Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway
    An MM&A freight train derailed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, leaving 47 dead in Canada's worst rail disaster since the 19th century (July 6, 2013)

Why he might be annoying:

    During his term at what was then Wisconsin Central Transportation Corporation, there would be a ‘fiery 1996 train wreck in Weyauwega (Wisconsin).’
    As the once-flourishing Wisconsin stocks took a nosedive, he was blindsided out of his own company (1999)!
    He was notorious for really cutting corners on wages and field staff — the key to MM&A’s record-breaking accident rate.
    It took him four days to respond to the derailment at Lac-Megantic, Quebec (July 6-10, 2013) — an eternity after it was already news.
    Without waiting for an investigation, he blamed the disaster on vandals tampering with the train's airbrakes. Then on the volunteer firemen trying to extinguish the engine fire. And finally settled on blaming the train's sole crew member for setting the handbrakes improperly.
    At the Lac-Megantic press conference, in a largely monolingual francophone township, he complicated the matter of damage control by not having a translator on hand.
    He ended his press conference by kvetching about the reporters' manners.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He came by his lifelong passion honestly — his father never worked in any other industry, either.
    Where others were about short-term investments, he focused on the long-term.
    His fellow alumni at Yale – where he graduated in 1960 – thought he was crazy to enter an industry they saw as falling apart.
    As the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 took effect, he invested heavily in castoff track from major carriers, which led to a regional boom.
    Having led the privatization of New Zealand Rail in the 90s, that government made him their honorary consul to Chicago.
    In the wake of the Lac-Megantic mess, he admitted that two crewmen – one to mind the locomotive while the other applied the handbrakes – were better than one.

Credit: Cool It All Right?


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 62.50% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 7 Votes: 57.14% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 15 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 10 Votes: 60.0% Annoying