Russell, Majors and Waddell

Russell, Majors and Waddell, organized in 1854, became the unchallenged giant of western freighting overnight.  From Leavenworth, Kansas (Territory), they hauled millions of pounds of supplies to US Army posts throughout the West each year.  They developed efficient methods of moving huge cargo by hundreds of wagons and thousands of oxen and men, covering a rate of 15 miles a day.

William Russell, Alexander Majors, and William Waddell were a totally unlikely partnership.   Russell, born in New England,  was a gambler, a dashing figure in New York and Washington, where he spent his time rather than in dusty Leavenworth.  Although his heart did not belong to the West, he continued to devise ways for his partners and himself to profit with his charm.  In the end, however, his clever schemes backfired with disastrous effects.

Waddell, on the other hand, was anything but charming.  He hailed from Virginia of Scottish ancestry, a plain spoken guy dedicated to saving every last penny his partners spent.  He ran the day to day operations and kept his partners in financial check.

Majors, an outdoorsman who spent his time on the trail, was adept at driving teamsters and moving the freight.  He was highly organized and devised the efficient system that would be imitated all across the West.  Anti-drinking, anti-cursing,  and anti-gambling, he required all his workers to sign a pledge to do the same. 

The crews proved equal to the tasks and had the best equipment in the West.  Horace Greeley, New York Editor wrote, "Such acres of wagons!  Such pyramids of axletrees!  Such herds of oxen!  Such regiments of drivers!"  In 1855 the company dispatched 500 wagons carrying 2.5 million pounds of freight across the plains, in 20 separate wagon trains each with its own wagon masters, teamsters, messengers, herders, and cook.  So when the Army contracted with Russell, Majors, and Waddell to ship 5 million pounds of supplies, profits were expected to soar. 

So what happened to start the company's long slow decline??

Next time...Profits and Losses
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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 27, 1869, three men leave John Wesley Powell’s expedition through the Grand Canyon and scale the cliffs to the plateau above convinced they will have a better chance surviving the desert than the raging rapids that lay ahead.  It turned out the men had made a serious mistake.  Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran and self-trained naturalist, had embarked on his daring descent of the mighty Colorado River three months earlier. Accompanied by 11 men in four wooden boats, he led the expedition through the Grand Canyon and over punishing rapids that many would hesitate to run even with modern rafts.