#378 The Last Oil Baron: Leon Hess

Your father goes bankrupt. You work for 50 cents a day to try to help your family survive the Great Depression. At 19 you see an opportunity where others see nothing. You start “a little fuel delivery business” with one used truck. Five years later you have 10 trucks. World War II breaks out and you serve as the fuel supply officer for General Patton. You come back to America and apply what the war taught you about logistics and moving fuel efficiently. You expand from fuel delivery to storage, refining, and open gas stations in 16 states. You take your company public. You merge with an oil exploration firm. You build the largest refinery in the Western Hemisphere. You buy the New York Jets. You built your “little fuel delivery business” into a multibillion-dollar, multinational, vertically integrated energy behemoth. You are Leon Hess, founder of the Hess family dynasty. This episode is what I learned from reading Hess: The Last Oil Baron by Tina Davis and Jessica Resnick-Ault.