KERN SCHUMACHER

By Kayla Anderson

Kern Schumacher is living proof that if you work hard then it is quite possible to live the idyllic Tahoe lifestyle, complete with a home on Lakeshore Boulevard staring out at Big Blue that everyone wants to host their party at.

Schumacher is the definition of an entrepreneur, getting his start in business when he was just six years old. He sold vegetables to his neighbors and mowed lawns. A few years later, he started a chemical bottling business and sold products to his doctors, medical supply businesses, and others before selling it off just before graduation.

Their neighbor worked in surplus materials and gave Schumacher a head’s up when he heard about a bunch of railroad ties for sale. Schumacher saw how ties were used in landscaping, and he bought his first set when he was just 16 years old. The government was selling 400 of them, Schumacher put in a bid and won.

“They were selling them for 37 cents apiece, and I found some high school kids to help me get them and store them over in Danville,” he says.

A few years later, when he was 19, he heard that San Francisco was getting rid of all their redwood rail ties that were under the Bay Bridge. He bought all of them, re-sanded the ties and sold them off to landscapers, ranchers, and do-ityourselfers, making 4-5 times what he bought them for and became the nation’s largest supplier of worn railroad ties.

As he grew the business, he soon talked his dad into helping him buy a materials base in Utah. A&K Tie Company (now called A&K Railroad Materials, Inc.) moved its headquarters into the naval base’s former railroad roundhouse in 1963. Between 1970 and 1980, the company’s sales grew to more than $30 million with only 10 percent of its business derived from railroad ties.

In the early 1970s, his accountant told him that it would be beneficial to move to a state that didn’t charge state income tax, and he thought of the East Shore of Lake Tahoe.

“I used to come to Tahoe in the 1950s and waterski to Sand Harbor. We’d have the whole beach to ourselves- because George Whittell Jr. lived there- until the caretaker would kick us off,” Schumacher recalls.

He bought a place on Shoreline Drive in Crystal Bay, then property on Lakeshore Drive in Incline Village in 1975. He built his expansive home on it in 1986 and has been here ever since.

“I like the weather here in the summertime; you can’t beat it,” Schumacher says. Along with boating, Schumacher also plays tennis every day on his own courts and opens his home up to special events and fundraisers.

He hosts the Oscar de la Renta fashion show every summer (generally the first week in August) and this year a Tahoe

Fund event is planned where the upper echelon politicians of California and Nevada will convene. Schumacher gives up his home for weddings, birthday parties, and it’s even the premier spot for the Beach Boys to play (as a fundraiser for Tahoe Forest Hospital).

“Hosting events are fun; most of them are catered and fully planned out- I just provide the facility,” he says. Last year events at his home raised a lot of money for the local ski team and the Boys & Girls clubs; the Sierra Angels also met there.

When asked what drove him to become an entrepreneur at such a young age and become what he is today, Schumacher replies, “I don’t know…my parents made me work when I was eight years old. And I wanted to make money.” To be successful, he believes that you must have the initiative to make something of yourself.

“I think that people get too lazy when stuff is given to them, and how they are raised probably has a lot to do with it. My parents only gave me housing, and I had to work to get to where I’m at.”

And now at 83 years old, Schumacher can sit back and enjoy the benefits of those many years of hustling, dedication, and solid work ethic that allowed him to get where he is at todaythe ultimate freedom to play tennis on his own courts, take one of his boats to Garwoods for Wet Woody Wednesdays, and wiggle his toes in the sand while watching the Beach Boys in his own backyard.