In the year since our last interview, Stu Crum (BS ’82) has led True Blue Car Wash to even greater success, adding 18 locations, more than 200 new employees, and growing annual revenue to more than $80 million. He splits his time, commuting each week between company headquarters in Phoenix and his home in the Houston-Woodlands area. Stu and his wife, Mia, have also welcomed a third granddaughter and enjoy spending time with their family, who live nearby. Asked whether the COVID-19 pandemic had imparted new lessons or perspectives, Stu notes that he has taken an outspoken stance as True Blue CEO to advocate vaccination as a matter of shared responsibility. “I’m concerned that in general, we’re seeing more of a ‘me’ culture and less of a ‘we’ culture,” he said. “There is a cost to that, and even if it’s not the popular thing, I am always going to do the right thing and encourage others to do the same.”
When March 2020 arrived, Stu Crum (BS ’82) was a year and a month into his new venture. As CEO of True Blue Car Wash, he was leading a charge in three regional markets with a business model based on express service lines and unlimited monthly subscription plans. Crum and his investment partners saw that with the right management, a successful location could serve more than 100 customers an hour, all day long. But then the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, pushing the economy into uncertainty. True Blue’s growth plans suddenly faced a challenge. “We did a lot of scenario planning. We were really prepared for the worst,” Crum said. “We took some costs out of the business, just as a lot of people are doing. But what ended up happening is that people are washing their cars. We had a record April, May, June and July. We received [federal Paycheck Protection Program] money, but we gave it back to the government. We thought we’d need it, but we didn’t.” Crum’s theory is that washing the car is a good excuse to get out of the house at a time when many public activities are limited. Customers stay safely in their car as it moves down the line, and at the end, they have a clean vehicle. Although events have broken in his favor, Crum recognizes they could have gone the other way under the pressures of the pandemic. “You just can’t predict what’s going to happen right now,” he said. “You go with your heart and what’s right for your family. I had a teammate just last week who didn’t have plans to retire, but he decided to. He’s not sure how long this is going to last, and he and his wife want to go out and enjoy life. Everybody’s reacting in different ways.” Crum’s career has given him keen insight into working with teams. After a three-year stint in the USFL & NFL as a placekicker, his next 28-year chapter featured managerial roles with Texaco, sister company Caltex, and then with Shell after it bought Texaco’s downstream business. For most of that time, Crum oversaw retail operations – convenience stores and gas stations in North America, New Zealand, and 38 other countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean. In 2011, Crum was named president of Jiffy Lube, International, a Shell company. After two successful years in that role, when he reached retirement eligibility, Crum began to think about seeking new challenges. About that time, Bridgestone approached him to run its US retail tire business – a $4 billion operation with 2,300 locations and a team of 23,000. “It was an opportunity for me to take the skill set I thought I had and try it somewhere else,” he said. “You work for a company for 28 years, and you think you’re good, but sometimes you have to prove to yourself that you can be good in another organization.” Crum led Bridgestone to record profits in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Around that time, he also was invited to join the board of a private equity firm. Having proven himself as an executive in publicly-traded companies, he began to gravitate toward entrepreneurial challenges. Crum left Bridgestone in 2013 to take the helm at a private-equity-owned automotive services company, but that assignment that did not work out as expected. “I retired for six months and played 100 rounds of golf and realized retirement wasn’t really my thing,” he said. Crum then purchased a group of car washes in Cleveland. Not long after that, he got a call from Goldman Sachs. They had a car wash investment and needed the right person to grow the company. “I’m having an absolute blast now,” Crum said. “I had run Jiffy Lube successfully; I had run Bridgestone successfully, but I had never really built something. So here I am; I’m 60 years old, and for the first time in my career, I’m building something almost from the ground floor. We’ve grown the company from 27 car washes to 43 today. We’ll probably have 100 three years from now. I’ve put in new processes and systems and hired the right people. The owners are extremely happy with our performance to date.” “Fun” is a word Crum uses often, but never trivially. Asked about the sources of fun in his work, he has a ready three-part answer. “We’ve had a chance to change people’s lives just by promoting them within the company,” he said. “These are folks who started off as a customer service rep who are now a district manager or regional director. It’s fun to see people grow and see their lives change.” “We’ve also taken this from a $38 million company to a $60 million company in 20 months. We’ve doubled the profitability. It’s fun to create value for the shareholders.” “And for me, one of the most fun things is that I’m doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing. I just waited a lot longer in life to do it. A lot of people do this in their 20s or 30s. It took me into my late 50s, but now I’m building something. When I was at Bridgestone, I had assistants who had assistants. Here, I’m negotiating the deal. I’m back doing things I was doing 30 years ago – but now it’s for something we’re building ourselves.” Crum pays particular attention to the customer experience delivered by his teams. “The example I use is Chick-fil-A; very seldom do you have a bad experience,” he said. “They’ve created a culture among their employees that’s just remarkable. I’m trying to do the same thing with car washes. We have some markets where I think we’re at that level, and others where we’re still working on it. But really, we’ll always be working on it, because the finish line is always moving. You can always be better.” For Crum, striving for improvement is not just good business; it also goes to fundamentals of character and integrity – two themes that were prominent in the Commencement address he delivered to the TU graduating class of 2015. Those fundamentals, in turn, are linked to his faith. “The most important thing TU gave me was an organization called FCA, The Fellowship of Christian Athletes, who helped me find my Christian faith,” he said. “There was a death of an athlete that happened my freshman year, and it really shook me up. I asked a lot of questions. I grew up emotionally and spiritually and became a faith-based person during my time on campus. I am still very much a faith-based guy; the things that are most important in my life have not changed since the day I graduated.” Crum, originally from St. Louis, attended TU on a football scholarship. He still holds the school records for point after touchdown percentage (0.992) and field goals in a season (21 in 1982) and he still has the record for the two longest field goals (57 & 58 Yds.) He is a TU Letterman and was named Academic All-American. His other campus activities included membership in Mortar Board, the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Today, Crum, who majored in marketing, serves on the Advisory Board for the Collins College of Business and on the Advisory Council for the Master of Energy Business program. He and his wife, Mia, are generous TU supporters, and in 2013 they established The Stu and Mia Crum Endowed Scholarship for Football Student-Athletes in the Collins College of Business. Through their giving, they are members of TU’s Chapman Legacy Society, Circle Society, and Dean’s Circle for the Collins College of Business. Although he makes it back to campus only rarely, Crum also is a longtime season-ticket holder for TU Football and Basketball. “TU gave so much more to me than I’ll ever be able to give back, and I mean that sincerely,” Crum said. “I am a changed person because I went to The University of Tulsa. Football, of course, was very important to my growth, and one of the reasons I met my wife is because her sister attended TU. I think of my professors – Dr. Collins and Dr. Burgess in Finance; these are people I still talk to today. Dr. Cagley has now passed, but he was my marketing professor. I was talking to these guys 20, 30 and 40 years after I graduated. I don’t know many places where people can say that. It was a life-changing experience.”