In 1977, Drayton McLane hired charter pilot John Schussler so he could visit his company’s wholesale food distribution centers in Texas. Every few months for the next six years, Schussler flew McLane and his aides in a twin-engine Piper Seneca to Lubbock, Abilene, Houston and El Paso. Eight- to 10-hour drives were cut by two-thirds, and McLane was sold.

McLane believes that general aviation helped the firm grow by extending its reach, providing flexibility, and increasing productivity. McLane Company, already a successful, three-generation entity, blossomed exponentially, building 16 distribution centers across the country and growing 30 percent annually for 32 consecutive years, McLane said. After McLane Company merged with Wal-Mart in 1991 (it now is owned by Warren Buffet’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway), McLane formed The McLane Group, which now includes companies in such industries as food, technology, plastics, logistics services, and import-export management.

Beginning in the 1980s, McLane purchased his own airplanes: a Mitsubishi turbo-prop and two Learjets. The company now owns a Learjet 55 and a Challenger 604, employs four pilots, flies executives throughout the country and brings customers to corporate headquarters in the central-Texas town of Temple. It also charters its airplanes to others.

Taking general aviation in-house was “kind of ahead of most people in food businesses,” McLane said from his Temple office. The airplanes have helped him “reach out” to customers by flying them to the company’s 500,000- to 800,000-square-foot food distribution centers to “see how we work, meet people, and feel more a part of our organization,” McLane said.

From the beginning, he stated, “We really used airplanes. Most [distribution centers] were in small communities. General aviation was one way to move our executives between our divisions around the United States, since we’re everywhere from Syracuse to Orlando to Los Angeles to Seattle, and we’re based out of here.

“We’d pick up our customers in small cities. It was so much better [for them]. ... General aviation played an important role. We were able to operate with fewer key, top executives because we could fly around, respond to opportunities, and solve problems. Plus, for executives and myself, it cut down on travel. Many times, we’d have to leave a meeting to catch a flight; if you had to stay in the office past 4 [p.m.], let’s say, we’d have to miss the flight. This way, I could stay. It gave us huge flexibility.”

Brett Moore, the company’s chief financial officer, explained that the time savings provides McLane another business advantage. General aviation, he said, “enables us to do for our customers what other companies can’t or won’t do, whether it’s bringing them in for meetings or taking them for plant visits.”

Texas’s sheer size makes general aviation a necessity for the firm because, rather than flying commercially to Dallas or Houston and then transferring, “I can have my wheels up at 6:30, be at meetings at 9:30 and be back at a reasonable hour,” Moore said. “We can do in one day what it would take two days to do commercially.”

McLane has utilized his airplanes to advance another, better-known corporate interest that lies 180 miles away. As owner of the Houston Astros baseball team, he flies in to catch a few games, stays in his apartment in the city, and does some business.

Schussler, who left Texas many years ago and works for a Florida airport’s property division, said that he’s happy to hear how general aviation has helped his long-ago client.

“That’s the kind of business you really feel good about: a business that used aviation more and more as [it] got larger. He became more of a user of GA, and that’s good,” Schussler said.

“At the time, when he bought his airplane, I thought, ‘Rats, I’ve lost a customer.’ But, taking the longer-term view, it’s good that he has used GA productively in his various businesses for many years.” —By Hillel Kuttler