#49, W-b Pump Supply Co.-1,451%

 

"I can walk down the street in Casper, Wyoming," says Texan Ronald Hess, "and I'm bound to run into somebody I know.The oil business is really a relatively small circle of people."

Hess's familiarity with the industry and its people has helped him build W-B Pump & Supply Co. into a $27-million business. The company started in 1971 as a two-man operation in Pampa, Tex., selling oil-field pumps.

W-B's success has brought him a lot of offers from larger firms wanting him to sell out. But Hess says that after starting with practically nothing, he intends to hold on to what he built.

"This company still has a long way to go," he says. "I figure if it would be all that good a deal for the conglomerates, then it's a good deal for me."

Hess, 38, was a manufacturer's representative for Dover Corp., selling oil-field pumps, when he bought W-B in 1971. He was born 12 miles from Pampa in Lefors, where his father worked for Texaco. "I was raised in oil-field camps on company leases," Hess says. "All I've ever known is the oil patch."

He put up his house and his car for a loan to buy the business, whose sales were running at $4,000 to $8,000 a month. Today, W-B sells much more than pumps. Headquartered in the Texas Panhandle, with six retail stores and two sales offices in Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma, W-B retails field supplies to the oil and gas industry.

With sales expected to hit $50 million next year, Hess says, "I've always had more growth than anything else." And although he's not going to sell out, he says a stock offering is in W-B's future, probably next year.