Largest Private Companies In Arkansas: Fill & Download for Free

Broadview and Yahoo! Finance built a map.Map of the Largest Companies in Each State by Market CapIn New York, that would be JPMorgan Chase. Johnson & Johnson dominates New Jersey. General Electric takes Connecticut.On the West Coast, it’s Microsoft, Nike, and Apple.In Arkansas, it’s Wal-Mart Stores. In Minnesota, it’sUnitedHealth Group. Procter & Gamble looms over Ohio. Utah is dominated by a company called Extra Space Storage.Market Cap refers to the total dollar value of a company’s available shares. For example, if a company has 30 million outstanding shares worth $150 apiece, the company’s market cap value would be $4.5 billion.Outstanding Shares x Cost of Share = Market CapCheck out their map. See who calls the shots in your state.

Sam Walton is the epitome of the American Dream. His first job out of school, in 1940, paid him about $16,000 a year in today’s money. He quit that job to enlist during the war, in 1942, and by the time the war was over, he had saved the equivalent of $70,000. He used this, and a loan from his father-in-law to start his first store. It was so successful that the landlord refused to renew his lease, and instead bought the store from Walton.He moved on and started over, in Bentonville, AR, about 5 minutes from where I sit writing this. He built that into the largest private employer in the world.So starting out at $16,000 a year in inflation adjusted salary seems like something most people could do. It is about $8 per hour. Saving $70,000 while working for the Army in the middle of a war is probably something few could do. It essentially means he saved everything he made, while living in a barrack.Taking that nest egg, borrowing more from a relative, and turning that into a multi-billion dollar company that employs over 2 million people is something only one person in hundreds of millions could do.His philosophy was to provide a variety of products at a low cost. Something he believed was good for society. He did this with razor thin margins, which is still the case today.He continued to drive his old pickup until he died. It is parked in front of his original store. He was uncomfortable with wealth, and never displayed the fact that he was the richest man in America at one time.We can debate the effect on downtown areas, especially now since big box retailers are being threatened by online stores. But how he, and his family came to be worth so much is: they worked. They started early, they worked late, they took risks, they had ideas that were before their time. And they have done a lot in NW Arkansas. They donate, they build schools, they build entertainment venues, and a world class art museum. I volunteer and many times have been “worked out of a job” by Wal-Mart employees volunteering in our community.I never worked for Wal-Mart, and I never met Sam or any of the surviving family. But I see their impact all over this area.

Here I go flashing some of my small bits of military knowledge. After WWII, there was a problem about what to do with military planes that were damaged or too outdated for any future use. Some, a small percentage, were sold to private owners, although they were “disarmed” first, but that really wasn’t a solution. Within a year after peace, there were still more than 300,000 planes around. A government entity titled “Reconstruction Finance Corporation” took over responsibility for doing something with them. Obviously the government did not want a fleet of private fighters in private hands lest the returning vets decide to put their training to domestic use - at least by those who remembered the Great Depression. But the RFC nonetheless set up a bunch of storage/sale depots around the country and managed to rid the government of something like 1/3 of those planes, many for salvage. For the rest, a program was instituted of taking the heavy stuff (engines, etc.) off the planes and cutting up the bodies, shoveling them into a furnace, and selling off the resulting metal, especially aluminum.Here’s a picture of aluminum ingots:Of course, airlines bought up some, primary C-54 and DC-3s, for conversion to transportation. Companies bought up the melted scrap for various peace-time uses.Here’s a picture of scrap engines:Even before the war ended, the possibilities of long-term storage had begun to be explored. Obviously neither coast was suitable. What the country needed was a lot of open-air storage where land was cheap, not suitable for agriculture, and temperatures would help ensure that no mold, etc. would survive. Eventually, Texas and Arizona won out. Specifically, Victorville in California and Pyote (a little place outside of Midland in the Panhandle area selected, plainly, by people who couldn’t translate the name) in Texas were winners. But the largest place was Davis-Monahan in Arizona.Here’s a picture representative of what that ended up looking like: for the survivors who weren’t dismantledThis is from a field in Arkansas. Some of the others in the drier states were much larger.Here’s an article about some of the Phantoms, at least if I have the right plane series:The F-4 Is a Great Fighter With a Bad ReputationThe short answer is that newer ones push out older ones in storage, some are sold, some are scrapped and some end up in other countries where they can be converted to other uses - or still work fine against civilians. I couldn’t get a straight answer from the FAA on this.