MYR Group Dispatches Its Entire Payroll on a Foot Pilgrimage to Wall Street to Deliver Earnings in Person

MYR Group has ordered every employee who can walk to leave their job sites and march to the New York Stock Exchange, carrying the company's quarterly results printed on paper and handed out at each stop along the route. The pilgrimage, which the company's management described as a matter of corporate dignity, began at dawn at the Rolling Meadows headquarters and is expected to take eleven days on foot.

Chief executive Richard Swartz told staff at a brief ceremony in the parking lot that investors had grown accustomed to receiving numbers through screens, and that the company intended to restore the human connection. Swartz walked at the front of the column in a hard hat and a company-issued reflective vest, leaving a line of electricians, linemen and project managers behind him on Route 14 and the Eisenhower Expressway shoulder.

The march has already changed the company's operations. Crews assigned to transmission projects in three states have been reassigned to carry the column's water and folding tables, and two substations are running on skeleton shifts. A dedicated logistics team now walks ahead of the marchers to set up tables where staff will read the earnings aloud to passing motorists. Local school districts have been asked to excuse workers who have children, and the company has built a temporary rest camp in a county fairground.

Asked whether the strong revenue beat justified the detour, Swartz said: « The numbers are strong. We could have sent them by email. We chose to make the shareholders wait for them, the way our linemen wait for the storm to pass. » A spokesperson confirmed that the company's finance department has been instructed to walk alongside the column and will update its forecasts at every overnight stop. Analysts at two brokerages said they would wait for the marchers to arrive before revising their price targets.

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