Trammo Tales, Chapter 1 (RPS)

Bloomberg and Trump

If you don’t know Trammo, you are in the majority. If you do, then you are in the fortunate minority who have either had a chance to work in the company, work with the company or know someone who has done either of the above.

The fact that I spent 29 years working in this company surely contributes to the obvious bias expressed in the first paragraph of this post. I learnt a lot here - both from internal and external contacts; or to put a management consultant spin on it, “stakeholders”.

The company was started in New York by Mr. Ronald P. Stanton in 1965 as an Ammonia merchandiser and grew over the years to include other agricultural and industrial raw materials. I joined the company in 1987 in Switzerland as a junior trader in the chemicals department (called Trammochem at the time).

Mr. Stanton as I picture and remember him. Picture courtesy New York Times.

In 2008, in an unexpected, for me, turn of events; Mr. Stanton (he was variously called RPS or Ronald, but to me he was always Mr. Stanton) appointed me as the CEO of Transammonia’s (later renamed as Trammo) Chemicals Division. When I asked him if this would mean a higher compensation for me, his sense of humour came through “No, and make a mistake and you will be fired!”

Later in the year, I was on a business trip to the Far East and got a call at around 2 AM in my hotel room in Seoul. Smart phones had still not taken off (the iPhone was launched in 2007). Whenever I was out of the office, I was expected to write up my itinerary which included all my flights, hotels and contact phone numbers.

It was his longtime assistant Barbara and she asked me to hold for Mr. Stanton.

“Where are you?”, he came on the line.

“Seoul, South Korea, Mr. Stanton.”

“Have you seen the news? We have been named by Forbes as the largest private company in the New York area”, he said proudly.

I congratulated him and said “That’s wonderful! Does that mean we are bigger than Bloomberg and Trump?”

He laughed and liked the thought of being bigger than Bloomberg but Trump, he said, “was just a scumbag”.

It takes one New Yorker to know another, I guess. Even back in 2008.

Ronald was always bigger and better than Donald.

My admiration and respect for Mr. Stanton knew no limits, and it was with great sadness that I attended his funeral in September 2016.

To read Mr. Stanton’s obituary in the New York Times, click here.

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