WTI in the DNA—Oil Patch provides fertile soil for oil AND families
When Bruce McKee bought M & W Hot Oil in 1981, it was a company with just a few trucks and a short but loyal customer list. Friends asked McKee how he was going to make it in the face of bigger and more established competitors. Unfazed, he boldly replied, “I’m gonna outwork everybody. I’ll stay out there till I get it done, if they’ll let me.
“We found out that if you take three trucks and work it hard, you can do the same as somebody else can with five.”
Fast forward 30-plus years and that same company now has 100 employees in a price downturn, proving the truth of his words. Two brothers, a son, a son-in-law and others are now among the hard workers at the company.
In addition to the work ethic, there’s a business ethic that goes like this: “Don’t cheat ‘em, don’t lie to ‘em, and outwork everybody else and you can pretty well stay in the business,” according to Bruce.
The “staying in” part is a challenge in any industry, but the oil patch’s notoriously wild price swings make it even more difficult to hang on for the ride in that sector. Bruce’s son Curtis noted as much, saying, “When it’s good, it’s really good. When it’s bad, it’s really bad.”
Hard work and long ours are embedded deep in the McKee family DNA. Bruce started working for a major service company at 13—partly by violating his “Don’t lie to ’em” principle when it came to counting birthdays. After his true age was discovered, he went to work for Yale E. Key, whose company was small enough to think more about an employee’s attitude and effort than to consider birthday math.
When Curtis came along there was a well-established family tradition of early starts and long days. The younger McKee’s thirteenth birthday found him also at work, chopping weeds, cleaning railroad cars and swabbing bathrooms for the family firm. To this day he bristles when an employee balks at doing some dirty job. “Why are you balking,” McKee demands, “when I’m not asking you to do anything I haven’t done myself?”
Both generations work long hours as well. Curtis recalls, as a young child, waiting up until nearly midnight to play with a tired dad coming home from an 18-hour day—and dad being very willing to do so. He himself works long hours and makes sure he’s all done with work before walking in the door at the end of the day, so his attentions, when he is home, are not divided.
Do the McKees feel, with more than 30 years behind them, they’ve got it made? Well, even with all the success and hard work in their history, Curtis considers one thing as their main obstacle
--read about it in the next issue!
