It’s beautiful up there, though if I’m ever going to take a trip for fun, I don’t want to go north at all. It’s cold enough in west central MN. I don’t do well in cold weather. I guess I’m a wimp for a life long Minnesotan!
We had 16 very good years in Minnesota.
C. Reiss Coal wanted me to move from Iowa to their Minneapolis office so we packed up and went north.
Less than a year later, Koch Industries bouth C. Reiss and I was moved over from coal to the heavy oil streams out of the Pine Bend Refinery.
The heavy oils were a product no one in the sale force wanted to deal with and since I understood heating values, I begin calling on customers while emphasizing the density (and higher BTUs) of the Koch product.
A year later, the manager of the marine fuels biz in Superior quit and I got his assignment, too. It was more black oil, of lighter density but essentially the same stuff.
I was a net buyer of more of this stuff than Koch actually made. I bought oils from Murphy, Superior, Amoco, Mandan and even Shell at Sarnia, Ontario by tanker.
When my boss asked what my financial limits were, I said I didn’t know—just making good margins. That was good enough.