Roads To Success 4.2

Just One Truck

Wayne Huizenga, Jr. is currently the President of Huizenga Holdings and oversees a business empire valued in the billions.  At the time we shot Wayne, Jr.’s episode of Secrets Of Success, the company’s diverse assets included ownership of Miami Dolphins and Dolphin Stadium, thousands of acres of South Florida real estate, banking interests, marinas, boat building interests and tree farms.

At one time Huizenga Holdings had the unique distinction of being the only company to own three individual sports franchises at the same time.  “We owned the Miami Dolphins,” Wayne, Jr. proudly began the list.  “The Florida Marlins, which was our startup baseball team that began play in 1993, ultimately winning the World Series in 1997.  And the Florida Panthers which began play in 1995 and went to the Stanley Cup playoffs in their second year of play.”

This immense business empire began in South Florida in the early 1960s with H. Wayne Huizenga, Sr., and he started, literally, with nothing.  “When my mother and father were married Wayne, Sr. sold his pickup truck to buy my mother’s engagement ring,” Wayne, Jr. began the narrative.

With few prospects, Wayne, Sr. began working with his father in construction.  But he soon found an opportunity to run his own business in the waste disposal industry.

“He started with a loan from my mom’s parents and bought a single truck down here in South Florida,” Wayne, Jr. explained.  “My mom used to tell stories of holding the flashlight for dad in the evenings so he could repair the truck.  Every morning he would leave early before the sun rose to start the route.  He’d complete his route picking up garbage by noon, come home, change clothes, put on a suit, and go back on the street to sell new business.”

And Wayne, Sr. sold a great deal of new business, growing his company into Waste Management, Inc.  As his business grew he purchased other small, independent garbage haulers.  By the time he took his company public in 1972 those companies numbered 133.  Of course, building the new company consumed most of Wayne, Sr.’s time.

“My parents were divorced when I was five-years-old,” Wayne, Jr. narrated.  “My father was a hard charger and wasn’t around very much when I was growing up.  My mother decided that she would move back to Chicago.  So, I grew up in a five-room house, if you included the back porch, at 63^rd and the tracks in Chicago.”

In his on-camera autobiography for the I Am Second movement, Wayne, Jr. described his family as being relatively poor after moving to Chicago.  His mother worked multiple jobs to make ends meet and often suffered from loneliness.  Adding to the discouragement, the Huizenga’s had been members of the Dutch reform church, but the pastor of the Chicago congregation told Mrs. Huizenga that divorce was not accepted and therefore she was not welcome.  The result for Wayne, Jr. and his younger brother, Scott, was that they rarely attended church other than on Christmas or Easter.

Wayne, Jr.’s impression of church life may not have been very positive but he did make it to Sunday school class just enough to hear that God existed and he had a Son named Jesus.  And in spite of her rejection by the church, his mother did not waver in her faith; she would pray with her two sons and talk openly about God.  Wayne, Jr. heard the words but it would be many years before he really understood their true meaning.

As with most children in families fractured by divorce, Wayne, Jr. found himself longing for the companionship of his father, and always desired more time with him than he was able to get.   “In the early days I didn’t see dad very often, just a handful of times each year,” Wayne, Jr. explained.  “He was busy building Waste Management which ultimately became the world’s largest garbage removal company.  As he became more successful we started to spend more time together but there were years when we saw him four or five times in the whole year.”

“I think that it affected me as a young man,” Wayne, Jr. told the Secrets Of Success camera.  “There was not a strong force in the house.  Mom tried as she would but she was always mom, and so I was a little bit of a rebel during high school.  I was out there partying and running around.  There were nights I didn’t come home and did things I’m not very proud of today.”

Wayne, Jr.’s mother fully realized that her boys needed their father, and after eight years in Chicago moved her household back to Florida so her sons could to be closer to Wayne, Sr.  With more access to his father, Wayne, Jr. would quickly observe that there was a great difference between the life he lived with his mother and the life he experienced when visiting his father.

© 2012 Philip Kassel