Heinz Schiller has done two things since he started his own business selling giant construction cranes 22 years ago. It’s hard to say which is more remarkable.

Heinz Schiller came to the U.S. in 1968 to handle sales for a German crane manufacturer, and wound up owning the business. Photo by Mark Rhodes

First, he kept his Hampton-based Schiller International going for 15 years. He managed to market German-designed cranes that were a tough sell in the U.S. because the patchwork of state highway-weight limits here made it hard to move them between jobs. Still, Schiller was pulling in a respectable $3.7 million in revenues by 1996.

About then came his second act. After years of persistent lobbying, Schil-ler finally convinced the German makers to redesign the cranes, which can reach hundreds of feet high and carry tons of material, to fit the U.S. regulations. The new cranes unleashed a surge in sales for Schiller and pushed revenues to $34 million in 1999, an increase of 808 percent, highest among whole-sale/retail firms in the Fantastic 50.

Today Schiller Inter-national is Liebherr’s top marketer worldwide, selling about 100 cranes a year. "I am very blessed and lucky. You know how you get lucky? By working like an idiot for 42 years. "There is no substitute for hard work," he says. It helps, too, to have connections. Schiller has been associated with Liebherr, a 19,000-employee maker of construction machinery, since 1959, first as an employee and today as an independent dealer. "When you are working with a [company] so long you have ... some pull. They are listening to you. And with this 42 years under my belt, I became an overnight success," he says jokingly.

Schiller earned engineering degrees at the College of Darmstadt and the University of Berlin before joining Liebherr. He came to the U.S. in 1968 when the company made its move into the North American market, and spent nine years as president of Newport News-based Liebherr Crane Corp.

The company’s main product here was a crane designed for building nuclear power plants. But that market collapsed after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. Schiller wanted to stay in the crane business so he took the chance to start his own company selling Liebherr products. His relationship with Liebherr remains strong. "Between Schiller and the [Liebherr] factory is a trust," he says. "They never let me down and I never let them down."

Schiller attributes part of his success to understanding the ways of business in both the U.S. and Germany. "They are not just divided by a different language," he says. "They are divided by a business culture. The Germans are extremely organized — they need order. And the Americans are more flexible; they adapt more. They are not tied down by tradition."

The company has become a family affair. Schiller’s son, Ingo, who holds an engineering degree from the University of Virginia, joined the business in 1992. His daughter, Hedy Schiller Watson, joined in 1996. She earned an MBA from George Mason University. "We have a certain family pride in this thing and we are working hard," Schiller says.