R. G. LeTourneau

Robert Gilmour LeTourneau, known as "R.G." to friends, was born on November 30, 1888, to a farming family living in Richford, Vermont. He moved with them to Duluth, Minnesota, and then to Portland, Oregon, where he attended school through high school, dropping out at the age of 14 to take on an apprenticeship as an ironworker, at the East Portland Iron Works.

There he learned the foundry and machinist trades, and, at the same time, did correspondence study of the "basics of mechanical engineering", although he never completed any course assignments in those International Correspondence Schools courses. LeTourneau then began his working life in a variety of jobs that taught him "valuable technical skills".

Early career

LeTourneau eventually moved to San Francisco, where he worked at the Moore and Scott Iron Works at the personal invitation of the owner. After the San Francisco earthquake and fire, work was hard to come by. As described in a 2007 LaTourneau company biography (after his passing, when the company was under ownership by Rowan Companies), before 1909he was employed at the Yerba Buena Power Plant and learned welding skills and became familiar with the application of electricity. In 1909, he moved to Stockton, California. During this time, LeTourneau worked at a number of jobs including wood cutter, farm hand, miner and carpenter's laborer, acquiring a sound knowledge of the manual trades that would prove invaluable in later life.

In 1909 he took an automobile correspondence course granting himself a "Bachelor of Motorcycles" as he learned about vehicle mechanics and graduated by taking apart and putting back together his newly acquired motorcycle in a day. After working on a project to build a bridge across the Stanislaus River, and seeing first hand the Fresno scraper, he was anxious to put to use his mechanical skills.

As described in the 2007 company biography, "[i]n 1911, LeTourneau was employed at the Superior Garage in Stockton, California, where he learned about vehicle mechanics and later became half-owner of the business." His stake was $1,000, and the building may have been the first in that section of California designed exclusively for the sales and servicing of cars.

LeTourneau was further described in the 2007 company biography:Refused military service because of permanent neck injuries sustained in a car racing accident, LeTourneau worked during World War I as a maintenance assistant at the Mare Island Navy Yard in California, where he was trained as an electrical machinist and improved his welding skills. After the war, LeTourneau returned to Stockton and discovered the Superior Garage business had failed. In order to repay his portion of the debts, he took a job repairing a Holt crawler tractor, and was then employed by the tractor owner to level 40 acres [160,000 m2] using the tractor and a towed scraper.