Tyson Foods is the world’s second-largest meat and poultry processor after Brazil’s JBS, and the largest in the US, raking in more than $53 billion in 2024. It’s a feat that must have been very hard to imagine when John W. Tyson started his company in the 1930s, during the height of the Great Depression.
Born in 1905 in Mound City, Missouri, John’s childhood was marked by hardships and early responsibility. After his father’s death, the family struggled financially, and young John was forced to make his own way. He dropped out of school after the eighth grade, driven not by lack of potential, but by the pressing need to support his mother and siblings.
He hauled and sold hay from his family’s farm but also started peddling other products: produce, dressed chickens, eggs, butter, and other fresh farm products that he bought and resold. He was married and had a 1-year-old son when he moved the family to Springdale, Arkansas, in 1931. It was the height of the Great Depression and Tyson later recalled having nothing but “a battered truck, half a load of hay, and a nickel in his pocket.”
Springdale was a crossroads town with promise and access to growing markets for agricultural products. Tyson realized that, even in hard times, people needed to eat, and chicken, a relatively cheap source of protein, was beginning to replace more expensive meats at the American dinner table.
In the 1930s, most chickens were grown locally and hauled to nearby cities. Without federal highways and refrigeration, delivery was limited. By 1935, Tyson was making runs to Kansas City and St. Louis with live chickens. He stacked and nailed chicken coops onto a trailer and devised an in-transit feeding system to allow longer hauls. In 1936, reading that chicken prices were higher in Chicago, Tyson took a $1,000 loan and $800 of his own money to purchase 500 spring chickens. Using his in-transit feeding system, the 1,400-mile roundtrip to Chicago generated $235 profit. He was soon driving to Cincinnati, Detroit, Cleveland, Memphis and Houston, charging a modest fee per bird.
Several obstacles in those early years transformed the company from an efficient transport operation into the food industry giant that it is today. For instance, when a supplier could not keep up with his need for baby chicks, Tyson bought an incubator, hatched them himself, and began selling chicks to growers. After realizing the critical need for feed, he became a commercial feed dealer for Ralston Purina.
Tyson was a very practical man, building coops and slaughtering facilities with his own hands, rallying his wife and son around him to help with the workload. Sundays often found Tyson on the road, negotiating with feed suppliers or seeking out new customers.
By the late 1940s, the invention of refrigerated trucks and more efficient production methods changed the poultry market. Tyson developed a vertically integrated business by contracting with local farmers to grow chicks, paying a fixed price based on weight gain. He would then market and sell the chicken. To complete the business model, he provided more services– marketing, sales, feed production and poultry processing. In 1947, Tyson officially incorporated his enterprise as “Tyson Feed and Hatchery.”
In 1952, Tyson’s son Don left the University of Arkansas and joined the business. Seeing the need for a chicken processing plant, he urged his dad to build one and oversaw the construction. Completed in 1958, he became plant manager and further extended the vertical integration model.
In 1963, the company became “Tyson’s Foods Inc.” and went public with an initial stock offering of 100,000 shares at $10.50 each. By 1965, Tyson’s Foods was producing 42 million birds annually— 2% of the national broiler business. Turning the reins of the company over to Don as president in 1966, John Tyson continued as chairman and chief executive officer.
John W. Tyson’s ambition was matched by a deep commitment to his family and community. He was known as a hard-driving boss but also as a man who remembered where he came from. In Springdale, he employed neighbors and old friends and became a central figure in local civic life. Through booms and setbacks—including a devastating fire that threatened to ruin the business—Tyson’s persistence remained steady. Stories among employees circulated about his hands-on management style: he would personally inspect facilities or deliver feed late into the night. He set standards for quality and dependability, refusing to cut corners—a principle that made Tyson chickens a brand name by the 1950s.
Tragically, John W. Tyson and wife Helen died when a train struck their vehicle in 1967. Don took over as chairman and CEO and ran the company during the next 30 years. His son John H. Tyson became chairman and CEO in the late 1990s until stepping down in 2006, the last of the Tyson family to serve as CEO. John H. still serves as chairman of the board, however. The Tyson family’s combined net worth is estimated to be around $2..7 billion, making them one of America’s wealthiest families. (Sources: University of Arkansas, Arkansas Ag Hall of Fame, Forbes, Business Insider)
I’ve Recently Purchased “Tyson” Stock on the Pullback
Tyson stock, which trades under the symbol “TSN,” recently fell to a new 52-week low as there has been a wave of analyst downgrades on the heels of constrained cattle supplies, weaker beef margins, and the overall concern that higher food costs at the grocery store could cause longer-term headwinds for Tyson as consumer might be forced to pullback and limit their meat purchases. What I do like is the fact that Tyson recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, December 15th. Stockholders of record on Monday, December 1st will be paid a dividend of $0.50 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, December 1st. This represents a $2.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 3.8%. Tyson also announced that its board has authorized a 43 million share stock buyback program. Which, to me, makes me believe that Tyson executives think their stock is at a very fair value. There are a ton of analyst reports and thoughts about Tyson stock currently circulating, so make sure you do your homework. Tyson Foods will report its fourth-quarter 2025 financial results on Monday, November 10, 2025. The press release and supplemental materials will be issued before the market opens that morning, followed by a conference call and webcast at 10:00 a.m. CST.
