Outworking the Competition

His church, says Rexford Blazer, 60, chairman of Ashland Oil & Refining Co., is convenient as well as a comfort. His company's seven-story headquarters in the eastern Kentucky hill town of Ashland is directly across the street from Calvary Episcopal Church. On Sunday mornings, while other businessmen are still abed, Blazer works until church time, returns to his desk after services to work until dinnertime.

Blazer, along with President Orin Atkins, 43, and other Ashland executives, follows what is more or less jocularly called the "Ashland Workweek." It be gins around 8 a.m., lasts ordinarily until midnight, runs seven days a week with only occasional breaks and brief vacations. "I don't think we're any smarter than the competition," explains Blazer, "but I think we outwork them." As a result, in the past five years Ashland has almost tripled sales to $805 million. This week Ashland will regroup 13 small chemical companies acquired since 1963 into a subsidiary with $300 million in sales to be known as Ashland Chemical Co.

Expanding Backward. Even in a business with more mavericks than most, Ashland is a curious operation. Organized in 1924 by Paul Blazer, late uncle of the present chairman, it expanded backward. Rather than develop crude-oil supplies first and then build refineries and markets, Ashland built its markets in the south-central states, expanded its refineries as the markets grew. Ashland still buys most of its crude oil, hauls its purchases with its own barge fleet, one of the Ohio River's largest, or by means of 5,000 miles of Ashland-owned pipeline. Critics accuse the company of being oil-shy, but Rexford Blazer denies the charge. "We have never run short one barrel of crude oil in our life," says he, pointing out that Ashland currently receives 40,000 barrels a day more than it needs, sells the surplus to other refineries.

Founder Blazer kept his company flexible, bragged that an Ashland refinery could be converted from one kind of refining to another "by supper-time." He also kept his work force lean, refused to hire his own nephew after Rex Blazer graduated from the University of Illinois ('28). "If you are as good as you think you are," said Uncle Paul, "you won't get any credit for it because you are my nephew. If you aren't that good, I'll have to fire you, and the family already has enough trouble." Paul Blazer loaned his nephew $20 for one-way fare to Cleveland, where Rex got a job with Allied Oil Co. By the time that Allied was acquired by Ashland in 1948, Rex Blazer was its president. He succeeded his uncle as Ashland's boss after the older Blazer retired in 1957.

Executive Fords. Since taking over, Blazer and Atkins have expanded with such acquisitions as United Carbon Co. of Houston, the O.K. Tire and Rubber Co., Valvoline Oil, the $96 million chemical operations of Archer Daniels Midland Co., and Warren Brothers Co. of Cambridge, Mass., the nation's largest asphalt-paving company. Meanwhile, Ashland executives including the chairman continue to occupy modest offices and drive low-priced cars. Says Blazer proudly: "We have probably the only executive parking lot in the country filled only with Fords, Chevrolets and Plymouths."

Ashland's finance committee has never met, there is no table of organization, and younger executives are simply too overworked to think up any make-work projects or write lengthy memorandums. The lone extravagance is a corporate jet that links isolated Ashland (pop. 32,700) with Wall Street and the world.

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