God's businessman.

Robert Gilmour LeTourneau (1888–1969), born in Richford, Vermont, was a prolific inventor of earthmoving machinery. As the father of the modern earthmoving industry, he was responsible for 299 inventions. These inventions included the bulldozer, scrapers of all sorts, dredgers, portable cranes, rollers, dump wagons, bridge spans, logging equipment, mobile sea platforms for oil exploration, the electric wheel and many others. He introduced into the earthmoving and material handling industry the rubber tire, which today is almost universally accepted. He invented and developed the Electric Wheel.

With the help of his wife, the late Evelyn Peterson (1900-1987), he founded what became a private, Christian university, LeTourneau University, in Longview, Texas, and was known as a devoted Christian and generous philanthropist to Christian causes, including to a camp and conference grounds that carry his name, "LeTourneau Christian Center." He was sometimes called, "God's businessman.”
In 1902, at the age of fourteen, he left school, with the blessing 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. Refused military service because of permanent neck injury, LeTourneau worked during WWI 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 using the tractor and a towed scraper.
This type of work appealed to LeTourneau, and in January 1920 he purchased a used Holt tractor and, with a hired scraper, began business as a regrading contractor. In May 1921, he purchased a plot of land in Stockton and established an engineering workshop, where he designed and built several types of scrapers. Combining contracting and earthmoving equipment manufacturing, his business expanded and in 1929 incorporated in California as "R.G. LeTourneau, Inc."
The LeTourneau name became synonymous with earthmoving worldwide. LeTourneau was largely responsible for the invention and development of many types of earthmoving machines now widely used. He designed and built machines using technology that was years, sometimes decades, ahead of its time and became recognized worldwide as a leader in the development and manufacture of heavy equipment. The use of rubber tires in earthmoving;[4] numerous improvements relating to scrapers; the development of low-pressure, heavy-duty rubber tires; the two-wheeled tractor unit ("Tournapull"); electric wheel drive, and mobile offshore drilling platforms, are all attributed to LeTourneau’s ingenuity. During his lifetime, he held hundreds of patents on inventions relating to earthmoving equipment, manufacturing processes and machine tools. His factories supplied 70 percent of all heavy earthmoving equipment used by the Allied forces during WWarII.
In 1965, I.C.S. awarded LeTourneau his diploma in engineering, 50 years after he studied the course. LeTourneau was 76 at the time.
Being a man of great Christian commitment and dedication, for 30 years he flew thousands of miles each week to maintain Christian speaking engagements around the United States and overseas.
As a multi-millionaire, LeTourneau gave 90% of his profit to God's work and kept only 10% for himself. A special friend of Billy Graham, in his early days, LeTourneau designed a portable dome building intended for Graham crusades. He also founded a university that is thriving to this day.
LeTourneau said that the money came in faster than he could give it away. LeTourneau was convinced that he could not out-give God.

"I shovel it out,”

he would say,

“and God shovels it back, but God has a bigger shovel."

His life's verse was Matthew 6:33:

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you."