It’s probably more than fitting that
Mervin Dunn ended up as CEO of
Commercial Vehicle Group.
Some would say that it was a doubtful
end for a man who grew up in a household where no one else completed grade
school, but Dunn and CVG are products of
the old-fashioned American premise of
doing the hard work that moves people.
So when CVG, a supplier of fully integrated system solutions for the global
commercial vehicle market, was on the
verge of bankruptcy in the early part of
the decade, it called on Dunn for some
of his vigor.
And it was no surprise that Dunn,
who beat the limited means of his
childhood and earned his money for
college tuition by working the tobacco
fields and later taking positions with
PepsiCo and GTE, was ready to take
on the challenge.
Digging in, Dunn didn’t just resurrect
the business plan at CVG, he changed
the company outlook. Early in the
company’s turnaround, unhappy that
the corporate offices were disconnected from the plants, Dunn drove
through the night with a group of executives to visit a plant. It had been a
long time since the folks in that plant
had seen a corporate officer, so what
Dunn did next nearly knocked them
out: Seeing that the place was dirty, he
went out and bought $3,000 worth of
cleaning supplies. Rolling up his
sleeves, he joined in with the plant
workers to start digging CVG out of the
muck.
HOW TO REACH: Commercial Vehicle Group, (614) 289-5360
or www.cvgrp.com
