"[2] A native of Oregon, he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II before starting his business in 1952.

The family moved back to Central Oregon in 1929, where Schwab was schooled in a railroad boxcar at the Brooks Scanlon logging camp, with his mother as schoolteacher.

He began delivering the Oregon Journal newspaper while continuing to attend Bend High School.

[3] At the paper, Schwab would eventually cover all the routes in Bend, nine in all,[2] outearning his high school principal,[1] and he graduated in 1935.

Schwab became circulation manager for the Bend newspaper, The Bulletin, in 1942[5] and served in the Army Air Corps during World War II.

[3] Les Schwab's venture into the tire business began when he bought an OK Rubber Welders franchise store in nearby Prineville in early 1952.

Announced two years earlier, it exchanged its modest one-story cinder block offices (externally resembling a tire store) [8] for an upscale, three-story executive campus.