R. G. LeTourneau - Early Life

Early Life

Traditional education held little interest for R.G. LeTourneau, and in 1902, at the age of fourteen, he left school, with the blessing, but concern, of his Christian parents. He moved from Vermont to Duluth, Minnesota, then to Portland, Oregon, where he began to work as an apprentice ironmonger at the East Portland Iron Works. While learning the foundry and machinist trades, he studied mechanics from an International Correspondence Schools course that had been given to him, though he never completed any course assignments. He later moved to San Francisco, where he worked at the Yerba Buena Power Plant and learned welding, 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 knowledge of the manual trades that proved valuable in later life.

In 1911, LeTourneau was employed at the Superior Garage, in Stockton, where he learned about vehicle mechanics and later became half-owner of the business. In 1917, he married Evelyn Peterson, the daughter of a draying company owner from Minnesota. 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 Naval Shipyard, in Vallejo, 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. To repay his portion of the debts, he took a job repairing a Holt Manufacturing Company crawler-tractor and was then employed by the tractor owner to level 40 acres (160,000 m2) using the tractor and a towed scraper.