Leland Snow:
1. was a tireless, focused, efficient, producer of work - He worked 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and had something to show for every minute he spent working. He expected the same of his employees.
2. was a friendly, easy-going, quiet mannered, fair, reasonable boss - an $8 per hour parts washer or a Vice President were equally welcome to walk into his office and sit down to discuss work or life outside of work. He was never too busy to give any customer or employee his undivided attention, any time of day, for any reason. I never saw him lose his cool or raise his voice in the 10 years I knew him.
3. understood "Customer First" - He would bend over backward, and was comfortable losing money making a customer happy, if necessary. The bottom line never came at the expense of giving the customer what they wanted and expected. He lost very few customers to his competitors.
4. became a very successful and fairly wealthy businessman - but he wore blue jeans to work, drove a used high-milage car, donated money to causes he belived in, sponsored the local symphony and local art, and didn't live an extravagant lifestyle. He paid his employees every Thursday, without ever missing a Thursday.
5. turned his company over to his employees several years ago, to ensure that Air Tractor would remain in Olney, TX, and would be run by folks who care about its operation. He might have made more money selling it to a bunch of investors on Wall St., but I guarantee he never even considered that.
6. had an idea for a better ag plane in the early 1950s, and then proceeded to build an entire industry around that idea. He realized that there was a need for a quality-built, safe, productive, and well-supported ag airplane. Then he saw a million ways to improve it, expand it, and make it do jobs nobody ever even thought about.
7. rode his motorcycle into town as a college kid with an idea for an airplane company, and simply needed somebody to take a chance on him by helping him get started. Olney, TX took that chance, and he paid them back a thousand times over.
8. just had a knack for designing airplanes. His gut feeling proved to be correct way more often than not.
Everybody at Air Tractor knew this day would come, but nobody wanted it to come yesterday. Leland Snow left some big shoes to fill, but left us quite prepared to fill them. He will be missed by his family, his employees, the local community, and the ag community.
Blue Skies LS!
CDE
