But the days of patrol leaders operating half-blind on the deadly streets of Iraq are drawing to a close.
It owns more than 50 Beate Uhse erotica shops, collects royalties from 86 franchised outlets extending into other, mostly German-speaking, areas, operates half a dozen sex cinemas and e-commerce operations, and owns an erotica museum in Berlin.
Maggie Hatch, who owns the Newbury Village Store in Newbury, Vt., operates half of the business with cow power.
Still, it is reliable, as you would expect from a company that operates half of the nation's 411 services.
The challenges are even greater when the route in question is water, as with the Washington State ferries, which operate half the country's ferry journeys.
Beginning in the 1930's, Mr. Sloan, with his brother Joseph, operated half a dozen grocery stores, under the franchise name Associated, in Manhattan and the Bronx.
Big Beard's Adventure Tours, Pan Am Pavilion, Christiansted, (866) 773-4482, www.bigbeards.com, operates half- and full-day trips on a glass-bottomed catamaran, with snorkel gear included.
"The building we're seeing right now," said Gary Loveman, chief executive of Harrah's, which operates half a dozen casinos on the Las Vegas strip, "is by leaps and bounds bigger than anything we've ever seen".
In 1984 Catsimatidis bought regional airline Capitol Air, which operated half of what is now the British Airways terminal at JFK Airport.
While this is the traditional value investor's strategy, a natural extension is to find companies with good long-term prospects that are unloved or unknown because they operate half a world away.
