Malcom McLean

McLean was born in Maxton, North Carolina in 1913. of Scottish heritage.. His first name was originally spelled Malcolm, though he used Malcom later in life.

In 1935, when he finished high school at Winston-Salem in North Carolina, his family did not have enough money to send him to college, but there was enough for McLean to buy a used truck.

The same year, McLean, his brother, Jim, and his sister, Clara, founded McLean Trucking Co. Based in Red Springs, North Carolina, McLean Trucking started hauling empty tobacco barrels, with McLean as one of the drivers.

In 1968 McLean financed a real estate project in Waveland, Mississippi that has become Diamondhead, Mississippi.

In 1971, the Pinehurst Resort property in Pinehurst, North Carolina was sold to Diamondhead Corporation, a land development company headquartered in Mountainside, New Jersey, and owned by McLean. The venerable old resort had seen virtually no noticeable changes in 75 years before its sale became the object of controversy. Finally, in 1982, Pinehurst became the property of Diamondhead's major lenders, who formed a NC corporation named Resort Assets Corporation. With their takeover, a more viable effort was then made to work in concert with Pinehurst village officials to restore the overall community.

In 1978, McLean purchased United States Lines. There, he built a fleet of 4,400-Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) container ships that were the largest afloat at the time. The ships, operating in round-the-world service, were designed after the 1970s oil shortages and were fuel-efficient but slow, and therefore not well-adapted to compete in the subsequent period of cheap oil. USL went bankrupt in 1986. McLean took very personally the criticism directed against him after the collapse of USL and the resulting loss of many jobs associated with and dependent on USL.

In 1982, McLean made the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list with a net worth of $400 million, however, a few years later, having gambled on increasing oil prices that failed to happen, McLean had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy owing debt of $1.3 billion.

In 1991, at 78, McLean founded Trailer Bridge, Inc., which operates between the US mainland (Jacksonville, Florida), Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

McLean also developed non-maritime inventions, including a means of lifting a patient from a stretcher onto a hospital bed.