Management: Texaco’s New Chief

As a boy in tiny Stonewall, La. (pop. 100), J. Howard Rambin Jr. got some early experience in how to be a Friendly Texaco Dealer: he used to man the Texaco pump in front of his father’s general store. A lot of gas has gone through the pumps since then, and Texaco is now the nation’s eighth largest corporation and the only oil company with outlets in all 50 states. Howard Rambin has been moving too. Last week, at 53, he was named Texaco’s new chairman and chief executive officer, a post in which he will replace retiring Augustus C. Long, 60, Texaco’s top boss for the past eight years.

Rambin worked as a roustabout on the rigs to pay his way through Louisiana State’s petroleum-engineering course, joined Texaco in 1935. After managing divisions in the Louisiana fields, he moved on to a succession of high-test jobs, became boss of southern operations in 1962 and president of the entire company in 1963. He worked closely with Long at Texaco’s Manhattan headquarters where top management wields greater centralized authority than is customary in most oil firms. Under Long, Texaco raised its earnings last year to $546 million to become the third most profitable U.S. company (after General Motors and Standard Oil of New Jersey), and its sales climbed to a record $3.4 billion.

A handsome, soft-spoken man, Rambin will not make any major changes in the lean and conservative way Texaco is run. The company watches each nickel as if it were the last one, pares executive expense accounts, runs a relatively modest advertising program. Just about every capital expense above $15,000 must be personally authorized at the top. To the envy of competitors, this frugality pays off. Despite declines in wholesale gasoline prices in the U.S., Texaco’s profits so far this year continue to break records.