From Warren Buffett to Tim Cook, these 5 Fortune 500 legends all share the same childhood job

Long before the corner office, the IPO, and the billionaire life, several of America’s best-known executives had the same predawn alarm clock and the same stack of newsprint waiting on the curb. 

They all got their start in newspapers, either pedaling routes in the dark, tossing the latest newspaper on the porch, or chasing down customers for payment.

Warren Buffett made some of his first cash by slinging The Washington Post. Tim Cook woke up at 3 a.m. to deliver the Mobile Press Register in Alabama. It taught these future executives some of the values they took all the way to the C-suite.

The paper route teaches “just good, basic business principles,” Ross Perot told the Associated Press in 1995, listing skills like managing inventory, collecting payments, and showing up on time, every day, no matter the weather. The 1992 presidential candidate said he started delivering papers when he was about 12 years old and threw them from his horse in a sand-strewn neighborhood.

The paper route is a relic. Falling print circulation and child labor concerns have handed the job to adults and the Postal Service. But the executives who once had the route haven’t forgotten it—and many say it’s where they learned everything that counts.

Here are five Fortune 500 executives—plus a few honorable mentions—who got their start slinging papers.

Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway

The Oracle of Omaha started delivering The Washington Post and the Washington Star at 13. By 14, he had multiple routes and was earning $175 a month—more than some of his........

© Fortune