foreword Even though we are a Fortune 500 company, at Ryder we still strive to be like the hometown shopkeeper whose success is defined by the fact that your word and your good name mean everything. Our future depends on our reputation for trust and keeping promises. We take that mandate very seriously and our more than 15,000 commercial customers of all sizes and industries around the world expect nothing less from us. The guidance that Chris Komisarjevsky provides in this great new book, The Power of Reputation, works and works well. I know firsthand. When I was named chief executive officer of Ryder in 2000, I never considered myself a typical turnaround manager. Yet, what I knew for sure was that future success depended on my reputation--and that of the company--for being straightforward, trustworthy, and doing what I said we would do. Early on, when asked by investors what I planned to do about growing the company, I was direct. I simply said, "We may have to become smaller, and more profitable, in order to grow in the future." That may not have been what they wanted to hear, but it was the truth. The following years saw us make numerous business model changes and more than a dozen acquisitions while significantly improving earn- ings. And, in one of the worst economic periods in history, we generated $614 million in free cash flow, the highest one-year total in the company's nearly eighty-year history. I've known Chris Komisarjevsky for years. In fact, he is the one I call on when seeking advice on reputation. His background in public relations, communications, and as a successful business leader in his own right have given him the expertise to help guide Ryder in many ways, most often American Management Association / www.amanet.org