Cummins leader Joseph Irwin Miller dies

COLUMBUS, Ind. (August 17, 2004) — Joseph Irwin Miller, the long-time leader of Cummins Engine, passed away yesterday. He was 95.

Miller will be eulogized as a great business leader, social activist and philanthropist whose influence will continue well into the 21st century. He built Cummins from a family business into a Fortune 500 company with more than 25,000 employees in 131 countries and more than $6 billion in annual sales.

Miller was born in Columbus, Indiana, on May 26, 1909. The young Mr. Miller grew up by spending many hours in the workshop of Clessie Cummins, the diesel engine promoter who founded Cummins Engine Company in 1919 and who had been the family chauffeur.

The family invested heavily in the Cummins engine, with W.
G. Miller, the uncle of Mr. Miller, serving as one of the principles and a member of the Board of the newly created manufacturing entity.

With degrees from Yale (1931) and Oxford (1933) universities, Miller went to work for Cummins in 1934 as the company’s second general manager.

In 1942 he fought in World War II as a lieutenant in the Navy Air Corps. He returned home to assume the role of executive vice-president of Cummins Engine. At the time, the Company was engaged in important wartime production building engines for cargo trucks.

He was named president of Cummins in 1945. Using a blueprint designed by Miller, Cummins sales increased from $20 million in 1946 to more than $100 million in just a decade. In 1956 the company launched its first overseas plant in Scotland. By 1967 Cummins had cornered 50 per cent of the diesel engine market.

Miller was not only a hero in his hometown, but around the country and overseas as well. He advised presidents both in the U.S. and abroad, from John F. Kennedy to Nelson Mandela. He received more than 20 honorary degrees from some of the most prestigious universities in the country and numerous awards. He is also known as a leader of the civil rights movement, and through his church, helped organize the 1963 civil rights march on Washington.

But he was most loved at home. Cummins employees’ appreciation of Miller was reaffirmed at the April
1997 Cummins shareholders’ meeting when an emotional Conrad
Bowling, the then president of the Diesel Workers Union, paid tribute to the retiring executive.

“You were at the top of the company with lots of important strategic world issues vying for your attention, yet you always had time for those of us on the shop floor dealing with the issues of today’s production,” he said at the time. “We could talk to you, and we knew you would listen. You
came to our gatherings, and we knew that you cared.”