TRUCKING STORY * USA - How One Woman Built a $400 Million Business

With Andra Rush at the helm, Rush Trucking went from tiny start-up to the largest Native American-owned business in the U.S.

Wayne,Mich,USA -Reader's Digest, by Margaret Heffernan -24 March 2010: -- When Andra Rush started her trucking company, all she had was a beat-up van, a pair of used pickup trucks, and the naive certainty of a 23-year-old. She figured it would take her about four years to make her fortune. Then she could use her newfound millions to accomplish her true goal: tackling poverty on Native American reservations across North America. "I thought I could retire by the time I was 27," says Rush, a member of the Mohawk Indian tribe of Ontario, Canada. "At that age, you don't know what you don't know"...Rush is 49 now and still working hard. Her tiny start-up just outside Detroit has grown to a $400 million North American business that employs hundreds of Native Americans, who assemble automobile components like steering columns near their reservations and then truck them to manufacturing plants... By 2001, many of Rush's 1,000 employees were Native Americans, working alongside people of every background... She says. "I like the fact that you can start to get some momentum and keep challenging yourself—and then suddenly you lift your head and it's been 25 years"... (Photographed by Kevin J. Miyazaki/Redux - "People imagined that the business was run by my dad or my boyfriend," says Andra Rush)