Budd was born November 2, 1907, in Des Moines, Iowa. He was the son of Ralph Budd and Georianna Marshall Budd. He married Frances Bullard on January 31, 1931. They had two children: John M. Budd, Jr., and William B. Budd. John M. Budd planned and led one of the largest railroad mergers (Burlington Northern) in the United States to 1970. This is in marked contrast with the attempted merger and subsequent bankruptcy of Penn Central Transportation between 1968 and 1970, which became the largest corporate bankruptcy in the United States to that time.[2]
In 1942 Budd was commissioned a major in the U.S. Army's Military Railway Service. He served in Algeria, Italy, France and Germany. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he commanded the 727th Railway Operating Battalion. He was discharged in November 1945.
From November 1945, to May 1947, Budd was assistant general manager for Lines East of Williston, North Dakota, on the Great Northern. In June 1947, he joined the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad as its president, a position he held until May 1949. In this capacity he was the youngest president of any U.S. Class I railroad.
He returned to the Great Northern in May 1949, following the death of Thomas F. Dixon to become the Great Northern's vice-president in charge of operations. He held this position until May 1951, when he was named president, succeeding Francis J. Gavin who had been in office since 1939. John Budd's father, Ralph Budd, another civil engineer, was president of the Great Northern from 1919 to 1930, and president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, a company half-owned by the Great Northern in cooperation with the Northern Pacific Railway, from 1930 until his retirement in 1949.
↑ White, W. Thomas III. "John M. Budd." Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography; Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900-1980. New York: Facts On File, 1988, pp.53–55.
↑ "John M. Budd, New President of the C&EI," Railway Age, 122 (May 24, 1947): 1081.
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