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Biographies

Biography of Michael J. Guthrie
CEO, Spectra LMP LLC

Michael J. Guthrie
Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors, President and CEO
Spectra LMP LLC, Detroit, Michigan (website)

Michael J. Guthrie is known to many as an accomplished entrepreneur, business executive, attorney, community investor and newspaper boy. Michael and his brother Carlton have over the last 20 years owned several manufacturing and engineering businesses that cater to the automotive, aerospace and consumer goods industries while demonstrating an overriding individual and corporate commitment to community investment and involvement.

Michael is Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors, President and CEO of Spectra LMP LLC, a Detroit Michigan based holding company with several manufacturing and engineering subsidiaries. Michael and Carlton are Spectra’s sole owners.

Spectra’s Assembly Division includes Detroit Chassis LLC and Primys LLC. Detroit Chassis is located in a new 218,000 square feet of state of the art lean manufacturing facility in inner city Detroit. It manufactures rolling chassis for large motor homes, buses and Post Office delivery trucks, and has also assembled electric cars. All are sold as Ford Motor Company brands. Detroit Chassis assembles and ships more than $300 million of vehicles annually. Primys provides the same services and products to non-Ford customers. Michael is President and CEO of both Detroit Chassis and Primys.

Spectra’s Manufacturing Support Services Division includes TruPac Logistics LLC located in a new 165,000 square feet facility in Highland Park, Michigan. TruPac provides sequencing, JIT inventory management and sub assembly services to manufacturers. Carlton is TruPac’s President and CEO and both Guthries are Co-Chairmen of Pioneer.

Spectra’s Engineering Division includes Magnys LLC, located in Novi, Michigan. Magnys provides manufacturing, facility, process and industrial engineering, and process modeling and simulation services to the automotive, aerospace and consumer products industries directly and through its subsidiaries VSim LLC, Forward Vision LLC. Its customers include Ford, General Motors, Daimler Chrysler, Proctor and Gamble, Boeing, Mercedes Benz and Bluebird Corporation. Michael is CEO of Magnys.

The Guthries’ and their various business enterprises have frequently been recognized for their accomplishments. They include: Ford Motor Company’s recognition of Trumark, Inc. as “Corporate Community Entrepreneurs of the Year” for their leadership and initiative in founding The Single Parent Family Institute, a welfare to work initiative for public housing residents on public assistance begun in 1985, the National Minority Business Development Council’s recognition of Trumark as “Supplier of the Year” and “Michigan Manufacturer of the Year” by Impressions 5 Museum. The Greater Lansing Business Monthly named the Guthries “Entrepreneurs of the Year.” The Michigan Chapter of the Black MBA Association named Detroit Chassis “Minority Manufacturer of the Year.” Michael has received the “Platinum Award” for Lifetime Service from Junior Achievement of Michigan.

Michael believes strongly in modeling Leadership Values and a Culture of Conscience. Detroit Chassis has a full-time paid on site Corporate Chaplain and Employee Assistance Coordinator . All salaried staffers are enthusiastically encouraged to develop a personal mission statement, to participate in community development activities of their choosing and to intern in the assembly line for at least one week per yeoperations annually.

Guthrie began his long career in entrepreneurship as a newspaper boy at age 10 in order to finance his purchase of a Wilson A2000 leather baseball glove after having been gifted with a plastic first basemen’s mitt from his frugal father. His lifelong struggle to balance wants and needs had begun and continues to the present day. However, he is comfortable with those lessons learned early on. He developed his seminal reflections on customer joy, the value of personal mission and accountability for choices during his “newspaper boy “ period.

He graduated from the public schools in Gary, Indiana as a scholar athlete. Guthrie played varsity football, basketball and baseball and was named a member of his high school’s all time football team. He was Valedictorian of his class (as were several of his siblings) and a National Achievement Scholar. Several of his concerned teachers pushed, prodded and challenged Michael to excel throughout high school and they informed his concerned parents when he did not. It was principally through their persistent collective efforts that he was motivated and well prepared to pursue college studies.

As a stock boy at the local grocer after school, he sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door in the public housing projects on weekends. Michael credits these early work experiences with developing his interest in the study of high performance work relationships.

A pivotal opportunity arose when Michael was named one of 40 Harvard Scholars in 1968. Harvard Scholars received a full scholarship plus stipend throughout undergraduate and graduate school. Nonetheless, he acquired a full-time job as a programming assistant in the Harvard/MIT Joint Computing Center in his freshman year after representing that he was fluent in FORTRAN. He quickly developed a working knowledge of FORTRAN and continued to work full time for three years. Michael graduated from Harvard in 1972 with an A.B. in Social Psychology after majoring in Mathematics for nearly 3 years.

Following graduation from Harvard Law School in 1975, Guthrie joined Sonnenschein, Carlin, Nath & Rosenthal, a Chicago based corporate law firm whose clients included McDonalds, Hyatt, TWA, Allstate Investments and prominent real estate developers. This experience provided broad exposure to condominium conversions and the litigation that frequently ensued. Both served him well as he and his wife began to dabble in real estate for their own account.

Michael discovered that he truly enjoyed the competitive world of litigation. He eventually began to specialize in litigation arising out of failed mergers, acquisitions and syndications. At the time Michael retired from the active practice of law in 1980, he supervised the defense of nearly 6,000 claims for injuries arising from alleged exposure to asbestos. Michael was particularly active in pro bono first amendment litigation on behalf of clients that included the Martin Luther King Coalition (a group of civil rights advocates and community organizations) and the American Nazi Party. He never lost a first amendment case.

Ray Kroc, founder and principal shareholder of McDonalds, introduced Michael to George Johnson, one of the reigning deans of black entrepreneurship and President and CEO of Johnson Products Company (JPC),. JPC was a manufacturer of hair care and beauty products for ethnic consumers and one of the first Black-owned companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Under Mr. Johnson’s mentorship and tutelage, Michael joined JPC as Senior Attorney and quickly advanced to the post of Vice-President for Corporate Planning with broad operational responsibilities.

In 1985, Carlton and Michael joined forces to acquire the small struggling metal stamping operations of Uptilt, Inc. and Trumark. Inc. in Lansing, Michigan. Although the business enjoyed gross revenues of $17 million in the year previous to their acquisition, annual sales fell to $8 million in their first year. The Guthries gradually increased annual sales to more than $51 million through product and customer diversification. Their product lines evolved from simple brackets for General Motors cars to complex stamped and welded chassis and bumper assemblies for Ford trucks. They vertically integrated by acquiring Trumark Metal Products of Warren, Michigan in 1991 and Trumark Steel & Processing Corporation of Erie, Michigan in 1994. However, by the year 2000, all of the Guthries’ commodity businesses had either been sold or closed as their strategic focus shifted to value added services and technology based enterprises.

The Guthries identified an opportunity to competitively price a Ford chassis then assembled in Mexico for a Midwest assembly site in early 1998. In an example of the reverse NAFTA “whooshing sound” they brought the Ford Class A Motorhome Chassis assembly to Detroit from Mexico. TruMack Assembly, Detroit Chassis’s predecessor, successfully secured a purchase order from Ford in late 1998 and commenced active operations at its present location in late 1999. Detroit Chassis has delivered more than 90,000 vehicles during its first three full years of operation.

Michael has been particularly active in education related initiatives throughout his career. He is past President of the Michigan Council on Vocational Education and is either a current or former member of the board or an advisory committee for the Eli Broad Graduate School of Management of Michigan State University, Lansing Community College Foundation, Lansing Community College Business/Industry Institute, Ingham Intermediate School District, The Harvard Club of Chicago Schools Committee and the Detroit Manufacturing Training Center. Michael has lectured or spoken at Michigan State University, the University of Michigan Graduate School of Business, Davenport University, Wayne State University, Governors State College, Lawrence Technical Institute, Lansing Community College and Drew University.

Guthrie is Past President of Junior Achievement (JA) of Mid-Michigan and is a current member of the boards of both JA of Mid-Michigan and JA of Southeast Michigan. He has been a volunteer consultant for more than 30 JA classes at the elementary, middle school and high school levels since 1979.

Michael has also been an activist and leader in civic and community improvement organizations. He has served on the boards of the National Urban League of Lansing, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, the Single Parent Family Institute of Lansing, the YMCA “Y” Achiever’s Program, The Black Child and Family Institute of Lansing, the East Side Industrial Council of Detroit and The Children's Aid Society of Michigan.

Michael’s business governance activities have included stints with Comerica Bank of Michigan (Central Region), Sparrow Health Systems, Physicians Health Plan of Mid-Michigan, the Michigan Council on Small Business and Entrepreneurship (under Governor James Blanchard), and the National Association of Black Automotive Suppliers, where he is past President.

Among his other activities and interests are membership in the Alpha Boule chapter of Sigma Chi Phi, reading, golf, tennis, Lionel model trains, 60’s Chevy muscle cars and mentoring.