DETROIT–The Moroun family seldom steps out of the shadows to show itself to the world. They may be billionaires. They may own the most important bridge Canada has ever known. But they are just shy that way.
Yet when the local media takes to calling you "crabgrass," when Forbes magazine slams you as "the troll under the bridge," when you are on the verge of all-out war with Ottawa, exceptions must be made.
So here we are, inside the American family's astonishingly private corporate headquarters in suburban Detroit, with Matthew Moroun sitting across the table like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
To call the conversation exclusive doesn't quite do it justice. At 37, the younger Moroun is in the process of taking over the company reins from his rags-to-riches father, 83-year-old Manuel "Matty" Moroun. The heir apparent has never given an interview. Until now.
"If I get slaughtered in your article, I'm going to regret this. All I ask is you treat us fairly," Moroun says.
After years of bruising lower-level skirmishes with the Canadian government, he has a "big ask," as they say in diplomatic parlance.
The Morouns know they are a bee in Stephen Harper's bonnet. Famously, during one of the Three Amigos summits, the Prime Minister pleaded for then-president George W. Bush's help in getting rid of the billionaire owners of the Ambassador Bridge – the aging link between Windsor and Detroit that accounts for a quarter of all trade between Canada and the U.S.
"Here's the thing. We have never had what I would call a real conversation with the Canadian government," says Moroun.
"All the talk so far has been at a lower level, and it starts with the Canadians saying, 'No matter what, we're going to build a new bridge and kill you. Now what did you want to talk about?' It's a pretty tough way to start off. It puts us in a position of saying, 'No matter what, we're going to stop you.' "
The Morouns say it's time to start anew. At the highest level.
If they can win an invitation to Ottawa, if the doors of the Prime Minister's Office will open, they are ready "to agree to what Canada needs to be able to sleep better at night. We can allay their concerns. We can be Canada's best friends."
Before weighing the sincerity of the Morouns' message, some necessary background. First, it may come as a shock to many Canadians that we do not own this crucial economic artery. Ottawa, after all, holds title to all but one of the other 25 major crossing points on the border. (The only other exception is a minor rail bridge at Fort Frances.)
But that is just the way history's cookie crumbled. Back in the 1920s, a group of U.S. businessmen bankrolled and built the majestic Ambassador in two years flat. When they cut the ribbon, it was the world's longest suspension bridge. Two weeks later the Great Depression hit, forcing the fledgling bridge company into bankruptcy.
Over the years, both Washington and Ottawa missed numerous opportunities to acquire the bridge. Then, in the late '70s, Matty Moroun – owner of a fledgling Detroit trucking firm – outsmarted everyone, including Warren Buffett, to gain outright control.
His timing was perfect. The age of free trade was about to dawn. The Big Three automakers were ramping up cross-border integration, with millions of truck crossings to come. Moroun shrewdly saw the future and it made him a billionaire.
And an aggressive monopolist, in the eyes of many.
The family's critics – and they are legion – accuse the Morouns of behaving like old-school robber barons. Using its chokehold on the bridge as leverage, critics say, the family has built a trucking empire with 5,000 employees on both sides of the border. And an insurance division that operates in 42 states.
Their private empire is now so great it dwarfs the bridge, which at an estimated $60 million a year in toll earnings is mere penny ante.
But the main issue today is this: the Ambassador Bridge is dying. For all its brilliance as the pinnacle of 20th century infrastructure, by 21st century standards it sucks.
Even the Morouns acknowledge this. They liken their piecemeal repairs to "trying to get a mechanic to fix your car while you are going 70 miles an hour on the 401."
Which is why they have quietly amassed land on both sides of the river and already begun work on a second span – without many of the required permissions. Weird concrete ramps to nowhere, described by one Detroit shipper as "Dukes of Hazzard launch pads," appear to be part of a larger strategy involving a substantial investment in lobbyists and litigation.
The company says it is ready to do whatever it takes to twin its aging bridge with a new six-lane "cable-stayed" crossing. With the ramps already built, the Morouns say they can finish the job with less than $400 million of their own cash. And remain the gatekeepers. Forever.
Canada has another solution. For 10 years, Ottawa has worked with Washington and with the Ontario and Michigan governments on the DRIC (Detroit River International Crossing), a far more expensive bridge that would rise 3 kilometres downriver from the Ambassador.
Unlike the Morouns, the governments have gone about the job crossing every "t" and dotting every "i". Most of the money is already committed for next-century customs plazas and new highway links to the 401 and U.S. interstates. The lone remaining wild card is the Michigan legislature, which has yet to sign off on its $200 million stake.
What Canada and the U.S. backers fear is that the Morouns will employ wolverine business acumen to buy every vote needed in the legislature to stop the public project.
The Moroun firm, already well known for its litigious ways, may simply jam courtrooms with so much paper that nothing can happen until a new and friendlier crop of Michigan politicians takes power to kill the DRIC altogether.
A well-placed Canadian diplomatic source told the Star the recession is the complicating political factor. Hard times (and nowhere are things harder than in burnt-out Detroit) have some people in Michigan looking doubtfully across the border at "Ugly Canadians" – aggressive socialists looking to engineer a government takeover of a successful private operation.
"In Detroit, Moroun supporters have had some success in portraying the Canadians as bullies," the source told the Star. "The irony is that the Canadian government is forbidden from hiring lobbyists, so we can't fight back the way the Morouns can.
"It's like being in the Stanley Cup finals, except Canada's playing without skates or sticks."
However, if you ask in Detroit about the Morouns, the family appears to have no shortage of American enemies as well. Many point to the Gateway Project quagmire – a $300-million collaboration between the Morouns and various U.S. governments to streamline truck flow on the U.S. side of the Ambassador Bridge – as evidence of a company that promises one thing and does another, almost always to its own advantage.
A U.S. court delivered a major blow last week to the Morouns, ordering the family to tear down chunks of the profitable duty-free and filling stations it built improperly under the terms of the Gateway project. But it is just one in a flurry of court cases still underway.
"I feel like I'm living in an episode of the Sopranos. But this latest ruling against the Morouns shows that bullies don't always win," said Rashida Tlaib, an elected Michigan state representative who has challenged the Morouns on every front.
"We are dying for jobs right now but the Morouns are crushing everything that hinders their monopoly. And when they realized they can't buy me, suddenly I was faced with three recall petitions trying to kick me out of office," said Tlaib.
"I know the Morouns are desperate to change their public perception. I once met Matty and told him, `You have a whole generation of people in southwest Detroit who see you as the Big Bad Bridge Company, and that's what your son will inherit.' He got so angry.
"But the problem can't be managed away with lobbyists and lawyers. The answer is to actually be a good corporate citizen: get the permits, abide by the terms, be transparent."
The Morouns have answers to all this – but they hardly help their cause by what seems an almost obsessive desire to stay completely beneath the public radar.
Billionaire American dynasties tend to want their names in lights with great public endowments – think the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, the Guggenheims. While the Morouns contribute generously to charitable causes, the efforts are invisible. Amazingly, even the family's corporate headquarters bears no sign to announce what it is.
We ask why, and Matt Moroun struggles to answer. They are simply a down-to-earth family, he says, who don't put vanity foremost.
"It is disappointing and painful to see the characterizations of my family in the media," Moroun says.
"But my father is a low-key guy. He would rather not have his name on things. I don't want to bang a cheap drum, but grade us on our performance at the bridge. That's what counts."
The Morouns will refer you to the aftermath of 9/11, when cross-border trade all but collapsed, threatening tens of thousands of jobs in both countries. Within hours, the family established a "war room" to keep people working.
Dan Stamper, the Morouns' right-hand man, said he felt the weight of the Canadian economy on his shoulders that day. And for the next six months.
"Within an hour of the attacks, there were trucks backed up for miles. We called GM, Ford and Chrysler and said, `Your factories are about to close. Tell us which trucks you need to keep things going,'" said Stamper.
Once the key trucks were identified, the company quickly escorted them across the border, he said.
"We acted so quickly, so proactively. With no hesitation we started adding extra inspection booths on our own land, just to short-circuit the seven-year time frame the U.S. government takes to go from idea to ribbon-cutting."
Stamper said they went from six commercial inspection booths to 10 in two months and are at 13 now.
"That is the kind of effort that should be on our scorecard. Was this not in Canada's best interests?"
Ironically, 9/11 has come back to haunt the Morouns. One of Ottawa's arguments against twinning the Ambassador is that locating the two spans side by side could invite a terror attack on key infrastructure clustered close together.
Canada also objects to the location. What made sense 80 years ago doesn't any more, Ottawa argues, because the Ambassador Bridge lands in the heart of Windsor, 9 kilometres from Highway 401. The the DRIC bridge would link directly to the 401, bypassing the traffic lights that infuriate truckers and Windsor residents alike.
Ottawa likes to remind you that when you drive from Toronto to Texas or Florida – the so-called "NAFTA superhighway" – the only traffic lights are found on that stretch through Windsor.
The Morouns' we-do-it-well argument has some traction, even among those who favour building the DRIC. Sarah Hubbard, spokesman for the regional business council, which takes in Detroit, said the family's performance in bridge management should make it a prime candidate to operate the proposed DRIC.
"Love 'em or hate 'em, the Morouns have a history of getting things across. ... Don't forget the DRIC is presented as a public-private partnership. It will be owned by the governments but with a private operator. So why not have the Morouns involved in that?"
For now, at least, the Morouns dislike the taste of that option. Why? They say Ottawa and other backers of the DRIC bridge are wildly overestimating traffic projections.
Despite an uptick in traffic in recent months, the Ambassador is likely to see only 7 million crossings this year – a far cry from 12 million in 1999, prior to 9/11 and the collapse of the Detroit automakers.
Another bridge, the Morouns argue, won't simply be one too many: it will saddle both governments with long-term costs, not just for construction but for the staffing of massive customs operations.
Customs brokerage sources the Star spoke with challenged this argument. While auto sector truck flow remains flat, a range of other industries from information technology to green energy systems are showing new signs of life, with increased truck activity both ways.
"Trade is coming back," one customs broker told the Star. "Granted, it has a long way to go. But you need great crossings to grow it. The real tragedy is if nothing gets done. Build one, build both – but the main thing is to build ... .
"Think back to the foresight of those people that built the Ambassador Bridge 80 years ago. And now look at the mess today."
Steve Tobocman, a former Michigan legislator well versed in the Great Bridge Debate, agrees.
"Where is the foresight today? Eighty years ago, during the Great Depression, there were people saying the Ambassador Bridge was a huge waste of money," he said. "Yet it went on to become an economic driver for the wealthiest manufacturing region in the world."
Tobocman, who often locked horns with the Morouns during his two terms in office, is not ready to predict a winner. The DRIC project may look strong at the moment. But that could prove fleeting.
"It is like watching a game of seven-card stud. The cards are being turned, the odds seem to be going up for Canada and down for the Ambassador Bridge. ... But anyone who gives you a firm answer is misinformed or pushing an agenda.
"I would never count out the Morouns. Never."
