A few years ago the Weyburn Oil Show Board created a new honour called Southeast Saskatchewan Legends. There are a number of people who, over several decades, were key players in building the Saskatchewan oil industry. Many of them started and operated not one, but several oilfield service companies, and coincidentally, almost every single one of them farmed on the side. You could call them “serial entrepreneurs.”
Ron Wanner of Estevan was one of the first to be honored as a “Legend,” back in 2017. He started wheeling and dealing surplus oilfield equipment, and ended up having a trucking company, an oil company, a drilling rig and a service rig company. He passed away a few days ago. He also had a policy of buying long-term employees their own vehicle after a certain number of years. I remember around 2010 he bought a Hemi Challenger SRT/8 for the engineer who successfully built his oil company from nothing. This is his obituary, as published in Pipeline Online. They don’t make many like Ron Wanner anymore.
Legendary indeed. May he RIP.
There was a sucker rod shortage? I be all like “What the hell is a sucker rod and why was there a shortage?”
After a little research, I kind of get it.
I worked in the oil patch for many years. Lots of interesting ‘technical’ terms such as sucker rod, dognut, monkey board, etc.
And new hires were always set up. One time I was visiting our plant warehouse, when a new rig hand drove up. He said to the stock clerk, “We need a McPherson left hand wrench. And I was warned not to accept any ambeedextrous wrenches”
Clerk gave him a wrench. Rig hand says, “But it says Stanley on it”. I think he made five trips back and forth, going through Stanley, Craftsman, and several other makes, until the warehouse manager took pity on him and put a McPherson label on one of the wrenches.
Joe
Yep….Ask any easterner that’s never been out west…
Go grab me a snipe woulda..??
Steak man
We were once using a powered torque wrench to tighten up a wellhead bonnet. It broke. No spares on site, hotshot was 6 hours away.
Ended up using a 30 ft snipe made from a joint of tubing.
A classic is to bet a worm floor hand that he can’t hold a 50# bag of gel above his head for one minute. At about 55 seconds a hand behind him slices the bag wide open. Fun ensues.
Among others “Get a gallon of checkered paint from the warehouse” was used more than once to screw with a newbies head where I worked.
Success rate – 99.9%
Did I hurt your feelings, Brian?
BTW, I once got a minor award from the some petroleum association years ago for writing about that oil field. Does that make you feel better?
And it’s still an old joke everywhere.
I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. The post and link are about an obituary about someone who was very prominent in the industry, which, itself, is very prominent in our economy. But if you choose an obituary to take a run at me for whatever reason you may have a bee under your bonnet, well, then I guess that’s a “you” issue and not a “me” issue.
Was at an auction in Cheyene, Wyoming in 1989. Ron was there. There was a tandem truck at auction and the box was full of pipe fittings. Those bidding were going for the truck, Ron wanted the fittings. So he got the truck and everything in it. A few days later I was at Viking and there was the truck, the load dumped on the ground and a teenager bead blasting the fittings and priming them for sale. The parts he sold were worth many times more than the price of the truck. Ron was astute.
That’s a great story – thanks for sharing.
Saskatchewan, and the world, needs more people like Mr. Wanner.
Great story! It’s a sad day for sure. 81 still seems too young. I really liked Ron. I met him a number of times but mostly worked with his sons. Viking Surplus was my Go To company for a lot of my needs and came through again and again. Ron really built a solid company for the SE SK patch. A great entrepreneur, fair hard working businessman and top grade person!