AN AutoNation Inc

By James R. Hagerty 

Wayne Huizenga, a college dropout, got his start in business hauling trash. His energy and ambition made him a driving force in the growth of three major companies: Waste Management Inc., Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. and AutoNation Inc. He also owned major league football, baseball and hockey teams.

Mr. Huizenga (pronounced HI-zin-guh) died Thursday, his office said. He was 80 and had cancer.

A restless entrepreneur, he favored service businesses with regular streams of income. He found parallels between Blockbuster and the Miami Dolphins: one involved renting videos, the other stadium seats. Rather than creating new businesses, he sought better ways to run established ones.

"We're certainly not smarter than the next guy," Mr. Huizenga told Gail DeGeorge, author of a 1996 book about his career, but "we work harder, and when we focus in on something we are consumed by it."

Though he loved flying around the country to scout acquisitions or inspect his operations, he wasn't much interested in running a business long-term. "I'd rather build a company than manage one," he told The Wall Street Journal in 1994.

Harry Wayne Huizenga, known as Wayne, was born Dec. 29, 1937, in Evergreen Park, Ill. His grandfather Harm Huizenga, a Dutch immigrant, had created a garbage-hauling business in Chicago. Wayne Huizenga's father was a carpenter and home builder, and his mother helped decorate the homes.

In 1957, Mr. Huizenga enrolled at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., where he had a pet alligator, which died after being given Scotch whisky at a student party, according to Ms. DeGeorge's book, "The Making of a Blockbuster."

He dropped out of college to join the Army Reserve, then moved to Florida and found a job managing a small garbage-hauling company. Within a few years, he bought a used garbage truck, started his own trash-hauling business and began buying rivals. By 1968, he had 40 trucks and a large share of the hauling contracts in fast-growing Broward County.

He insisted on keeping the garbage trucks clean and well-painted. Some sported slogans such as "This Truck Has Bad Breath" and "We Cater Weddings."

Meanwhile, Dean Buntrock, a South Dakota native who had married a cousin of Mr. Huizenga, began running the Chicago-area garbage business started by Mr. Huizenga's grandfather. Mr. Buntrock persuaded Mr. Huizenga to combine the Florida and Chicago businesses into one publicly owned company, which became Waste Management. Mr. Huizenga then raced around the country making acquisitions to build a national business.

Mr. Huizenga's first marriage failed, partly because he was so wedded to business. "I've never understood how someone could separate their business from their personal life," he once said. In 1972, he married Marti Goldsby, who had done billing and clerical work for one of his early trash companies. She died 14 months ago.

By the late 1970s, Mr. Huizenga was tired of commuting between his home in Fort Lauderdale and the Chicago headquarters of Waste Management. He also disliked being nominally subordinate to Mr. Buntrock, who was chief executive while Mr. Huizenga was president.

He left the company in 1984 and spent some time fishing for marlins, racing cars and lounging on his 91-foot yacht, the Sun Dream. Soon, he was buying companies again, including suppliers of portable toilets and water bottles for home coolers.

A friend, John Melk, owned a Blockbuster video store near Chicago and encouraged Mr. Huizenga to visit it. Mr. Huizenga didn't own a video player and wasn't interested in movies, but when he visited the store in early 1987, he was impressed. Mr. Huizenga and partners began investing in Blockbuster and gained control for about $18 million. Then they rushed to acquire other video outlets and create a national chain with bright, clean stores that were larger than those of most rivals and shunned pornographic videos to preserve a family image.

The company went public, and Wall Street loved the rapid growth, but some analysts warned that the video boom eventually would peter out as technology created better ways to deliver entertainment electronically. Blockbuster diversified by investing in recorded-music stores and movie production.

In 1994, Mr. Huizenga sold Blockbuster to Viacom Inc., headed by Sumner Redstone, for $8.4 billion of stock. Soon afterward, the Blockbuster business began to deteriorate. One problem was that retail prices for videos fell, making it more tempting for people to buy than rent. Then came the gradual shift to buying movies over the internet.

Dish Network Corp. bought the Blockbuster chain out of bankruptcy in 2011, but within two years was closing it down.

Mr. Huizenga moved on in the mid-1990s to invest in trash collection again via his Republic Industries Inc. He also founded AutoNation in an attempt to create the Home Depot of car retailing. AutoNation's early performance was rocky, and in 1999 it announced the closure of some of its megastores. Mr. Huizenga gave up his managerial role.

He also was a co-founder of Extended Stay America Inc., a lodging chain.

Unglamorous businesses still appealed to him. In 2004, Mr. Huizenga and his longtime business partner, Steven Berrard, bought control of Swisher Hygiene Inc., a maker of restroom sanitation products, including the odor-fighting pucks found in urinals.

Mr. Huizenga invested in major league sports in the 1990s and at one point owned the Marlins (baseball), Dolphins (football) and Panthers (hockey). He hoped to treat them all like businesses. Worried about the details of customer service, he looked for containers that would help fans avoid spilling popcorn. Eventually, though, it became clear that sports weren't like other businesses. Every decision on talent was subject to endless second-guessing from the public, and moves that strengthened teams didn't necessarily bolster profits.

One regret, he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 2009, was selling or trading the Marlins' best baseball players a year after they won the World Series in 1997. "We lost $34 million the year we won the World Series," he said. "If I had to do it over again, I'd say, 'OK, we'll go one more year, but I'm telling you right now, at the end of this year, I'm out of here.' "

Mr. Huizenga also regretted that his hectic business life left little time for his children. "Your kids grow up a lot quicker than you think they do, and all of a sudden you look back, you haven't spent the time with them," he said. He is survived by four children and 11 grandchildren.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 23, 2018 12:35 ET (16:35 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.