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Many U.S companies hesitate to talk publicly about their growing air fleets. They fear that stockholders might think the planes are used only for junkets and fishing trips. But few companies will buy, and fewer plane makers will sell, a plane unless it adds to the customer's profit. Eastman Kodak, U.S. Steel, International Business Machines, Firestone Tire & Rubber, Socony Mobil Oil Co and Texas Co. all have fleets ranging from puddle jumpers to four-engined DC-6Bs and turbo prop Vickers Viscounts. They find them worth their cost many times over in shuttling men and equipment around their widely diversified operations.
Some other big and little customers who fly for profit:
¶ General Motors' President Harlow Curtice, whose company runs its own airline with 18 planes logging 7,000 miles daily; Curtice has one plane at his disposal at all times, averages two trips weekly to G.M. operations around the U.S.
¶ Independent Texas Oilman William R. Goddard, who logs 400 hours annually inspecting his wells, and says: "Time means money, and I try to save all I can."
¶ Varner Steel Products' President R. G. Varner, who bought his first plane five years ago to spread out from Pine Bluff, Ark., selling his company's light steel pipe and other products. Says he: "In 1952 we did a gross business of $218,000. This year we are doing a gross business of almost $1,000,000, and we have extended our work into Canada, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, Texas and Virginia.
¶ Weyerhaeuser Timber Co., which is able to evaluate insect damage in 1% of the time previously required. Weyerhaeuser is now moving into helicopters to reseed forest areas faster and more economically than before.
¶ Magnolia Petroleum Co., which has 14 planes, recently flew a team of fire fighters with full equipment from Dallas to a burning well in southwest Texas, got them there hours faster than by commercial airline.
¶ Magnet Cove Barium Corp. (Magco-bar), one of the world's biggest dealers in drilling mud, which uses aircraft to fly its "mud doctors" to out-of-the-way sites around the U.S. It has found that one man in a light plane can do the work of eight in cars or aboard boats, and the time saved often means keeping a valuable well from being wrecked. Magcobar's fleet: 17 planes, mostly float-equipped, which flew 7,200 hours last year at a cost of $144,000, far less than the business they brought.
The Leaders. The Big Three of the private-plane industry are Cessna Aircraft Co., whose President Dwane Wallace is called the "Henry Ford of the light-plane business"; Beech Aircraft Corp., whose President Olive Ann Beech is the only woman to boss a big plane maker, and Piper Aircraft Corp., whose President William T. Piper is the dean of the industry at 77.