When founder Duvall Hecht sold Newport Beach-based Books on Tape Inc. in 2001 to Random House, his wife Ann Marie Rousseau says he bought two things: “a Porsche and an 18-wheeler.”
The rational for the Porsche was simple enough. Hecht in 1974 sold his Porsche and used the $4,500 in proceeds to start the company that grew to $25 million in yearly sales by the time he exited.
The 18-wheeler?
Well, that’s a little more complicated. The story involves an Olympic gold medal, a stint as an airline pilot and a friend who runs a camper outlet in Stanton.
But let’s get back to 2001.
“When I sold Books on Tape, I looked around at other things to do, but nothing looked interesting,” Hecht said.
A quiet retirement wasn’t an option, he said.
“I like to work,” Hecht said. “My father worked to the day he died.”
One thing he did do was become a “silent partner” with former Books on Tape chief executive Ron Prowell, who bought a couple of camper outlets in North Orange County. Through that connection, he met the folks at Lancaster’s Lance Camper Manufacturing Corp., which makes and ships campers to dealers throughout the U.S.
But mostly, Hecht said he reflected.
A rowing gold medalist in the 1956 Olympics, he had been the founding coach of the University of California, Irvine, crew program in the 1960s and ’70s.
“For 10 years, I drove the shell hauler,a 60-foot trailer,to competitions around the country,” Hecht said. “So I was used to long drives.”
A Marine pilot in his youth, Hecht also spent a year flying for Pan American World Airways when he left the service.
“I like moving big things around,” he said.
One thought led to another. Soon Hecht enrolled in trucking school.
“There’s a lot to learn about trucking,” Hecht said “I now have a hazmat rating.”
After a month driving for Utah’s CR England Inc. “to win my spurs,” Hecht said he was certified to be an over-the-road driver and decided to become an owner-operator.
“CRE handles refrigerated freight,” Hecht said. “It’s no fun. I remember I had one run to make a drop-off at the Costco distribution center in Washington state. My time slot (at the loading dock) was 3 a.m. for one hour. If you don’t make your hour, they take 24 hours to reschedule you.”
Hecht bought a 1997 Freightliner with a ’97 Detroit engine,”It doesn’t use a quart of oil in 10,000 miles!” he says proudly.
He had it outfitted to carry campers, incorporated as Yellow Bird Express Inc. and now drives for Lance Campers one or two weeks a month.
“The people at Lance have been very generous to take me on and are wonderful to work with,” Hecht said.
It’s not a lark. Hecht works hard.
“It requires your attention at all times,” he said. “I like that.”
Listening to Hecht talk about his work, it’s clear that he doesn’t just like it,he loves it.
“Look around your home or office,” he said. “Probably everything in it was on a truck. We have the greatest economy in the world, and everything goes via trucks. I like being part of that.”
The days are long.
“I get up at 6, start driving at 8, go 500 miles until 8 p.m., stop, have dinner, sleep and then get up and do it again,” Hecht said.
The driving “is my meditation” he said. “It’s solitude. You can hardly find that anymore. I get to listen to books and see the country in all types of weather.”
“He often calls me and says, ‘Oh, Ann Marie, I’m watching the most beautiful sunset,’ or talks about what he has seen that day,” Rousseau said.
“I love the USA,” Hecht said. “It’s the most beautiful country in the world. It has the most fabulous highway system in the world. The people are friendly. They’re happy to see you when you arrive.”
“He loves talking to the other truckers about their trucks,” Rousseau said.
“There’s an ethic among truckers,” Hecht said. “They’re very polite, democratic and helpful. They’re really nice guys.”
How do they take to the former businessman, who spent 25 years in the securities business before founding his own company?
“I just tell everybody I was a coach,” Hecht said, adding wryly, “When I was in the securities business, I never talked about coaching at all.”
But he said he’s not worried now about them finding out about his notable past.
“They know me now,” he said. “They know how hard I work.”
Hecht has a trucker’s heart that comes to the fore as he waxes poetic about, well, a truck stop.
“When I was in the Marines, we would go out to the planes lined up on the tarmac at sunrise. And I always thought that was wonderful. But you should stop at a truck stop first thing in the morning! There’ll be 250 magnificent, huge trucks starting up, all rumbling in the dawn light. It’s spectacular.”
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Book Smarts
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Hecht: “I was commuting to L.A. and going out of my mind” |
No wonder Duvall Hecht was drawn to trucking. After all, it was while driving that he got the idea that changed his life.
He was living in Orange County and working as marketing manager at Bateman Eichler Hill Richards, a securities firm, in Los Angeles.
“I was commuting to L.A. and going out of my mind,” Hecht said.
A lifetime book lover, he said he was uninterested in the offerings on the radio.
“Back then, you could get the Bible on tape, some language lessons, or a few classics that were in the public domain. There was nothing in the way of literature or bestsellers,” he said.
He bought an eight-cassette reading of Lord Chesterton’s letters for a steep price, listened to it once, and then shelved it. Why listen to it again?
“I thought, ‘There ought to be a service offering readings of bestsellers that you can rent via mail order,'” he said.
The more he thought about it, the more the idea seemed marketable.
He shopped it around to publishers and Knopf, now part of Bertelsmann AG, ended up giving him the rights to record “a couple dozen” of its titles in return for 10% of the rental revenue. Hecht was on his way.
In 1974, he sold his Porsche for capital, recorded four of the books and put them out.
“Not only did people order them,” Hecht said. “They actually returned them!”
By 2001, Books on Tape had 100,000 customers and annual revenue of about $25 million, evenly divided between rentals and sales to libraries, according to Hecht.
Then Random House, also now part of Bertelsmann, came along.
,Roger Bloom
