Posted 14 years ago
yawger
(1 item)
I found this can in a warehouse I was cleaning out. As you can see from the images other than being dirty it's in pretty good shape. The top and the bottom I believe are tin but the core feels like cardboard. I haven't been able to find much information and was hoping someone could help. All I know is the copyright date is 1968 but that doesn't me the can is from '68. I was hoping to find out how old it really is and what the value of it might be. Also the dirt on the outside appears to be grease is there anyway of cleaning the can that wont ruin it? If it really is cardboard should I empty the contents or leave it full.
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
I allso have a 1 quart macmillian extra heavy duty motor oil can with SAE30 date 1968 ??? whats its value.
I am a MacMillan Ring Free Oil collector. This can is a cardboard can from 1968 and was sold for several years after. MacMillan was primarily in the south and west. They came out with the first composit can in the 40's due to the lack of metal during the war. This can can be cleaned with a mild degreaser sprayed onto a damp rag and then wiped on the can. If it is full of oil, drain it from the bottom of the can as eventually it will leak and discolor the paper. They are very common so the value is only about 10 dollars.
My father was the chemist at the MacMillan refinery at Norphlet, Arkansas. The other refinery and MR. R. S. MacMillan's office were in Signal Hill / Long Beach, California. My mother was a secretary in MacMillan's business office in El Dorado, Arkansas. Daddy developed and helped develop most of the MacMillan oil products. He was also the superintendent of the asphalt plant at the Norphlet refinery. We lived right across from the refinery office on MacMillan Road, about 200 yards from the refinery gate. Five of our neighbors at various times were superintendents of the refinery. All of our other neighbors along MacMillan Road worked for either Macmillan or as teachers and janitors in the Norphlet Schools, which were about 300 to 400 yards west of the refinery on the south side of the road. In the summers 1959-62 when I was in college, I worked in the refinery's "Oil House," where I helped fill and package oil in 1-quart and 5-quart cans and 55-gallon drums, and load it into trucks at the loading dock and into boxcars, as well as unloading and stacking empty cans and drums prior to filling. The cans I filled were all-metal and white with a large red M and black small print. The can depicted above came along later in the 60's. The refinery was decades old and obsolete, and the "Smackover" oil field was running dry before more modern methods were developed to cause the old wells drilled in the 1920's to start flowing better. All of Norphlet was an EPA superfund site, as were much of Union and Columbia counties, completely barren because of various salts in the brine that came up with the oil. For a long time, the brine was simply pumped on the ground. Some trees that had been dead for 50 years failed to rot because they were so poisoned that bacteria could not survive in them. Then, plants were built to extract bromine, iodine, and other chemicals from the brine, and that part of Arkansas became the world's largest source of bromine. MacMillan did not get into the bromine business, and did not produce gasoline, so it did not enjoy the success of other companies in the area, such as Monsanto and Murphy Oil. My mother went to school in El Dorado with Charlie Murphy, who started Murphy Oil, best known now for its filling stations at Wal-Marts. H. L. Hunt started building his vast fortune in El Dorado, where one of his wives and families lived. If I remember right, He had other wives (married and common-law) and families, who were for a time unaware aware of the existence of each other. He was the inspiration for "J. R." in the TV series "Dallas," which was tamer in many aspects than reality. His sons born in El Dorado tried to corner and take over control of the silver market in about 1980, driving silver to $50/oz, a price not reached again until last year, from which it has fallen back to the low $30's as of this writing. Back to MacMillan -- as the local oil field went dry before effective frakking was possible, and EPA restrictions prevented many other changes because of the expense of the necessary cleanup, the refinery fizzled out in the 1970s. My father retired and became ill with cancer in 1969, but lived until 1988. My parents bought a house in El Dorado in the late 70's and lived in it until Mama died in 1995. I am in email contact with others whose parents worked at the MacMillan refinery, so perhaps between us, we can recall facts that may answer questions that readers may pose.
hi , my Dad worked for
Macmillan oil in LongBeach ca.for 36 years, I have an oil can just like yours , also a grease can . Dad drove a tanker for 25 years and worked in the shop for 11 years ( dennislewis284@gmail.com)