The WD-40 firm had to transfer a particularly priceless corporate asset from one vault to another when it changed banks in 2018.
A security company was duly hired, and after placing the priceless object in a briefcase and securing it to his wrist, the company’s president and CEO, Garry Ridge, boarded an armored vehicle and traveled, flanked by two security guards, to a nearby Bank of America branch in the Californian city of San Diego.
You may have been forgiven for thinking he was carrying some pricey corporate artifact or a piece of artwork, but it was actually a notepad that was carrying information that was even more valuable: the recipe for the company’s best-selling WD-40 “penetrating oil.”
I’m referring to the “multi-use product,” as it states on the blue and yellow aerosol canister with the characteristic red cap, which is frequently found in tool boxes, garden sheds, and under-stairs cabinets across the nation.
The formula has never been protected by a patent due to concern that its ingredients would become known. In fact, aside from its journey from vault to vault four years ago, it has only been exposed to the outside world once, when Ridge rode around Times Square in New York City on a horse while decked out in armor to mark the company’s 50th anniversary.
After 25 years on the properly greased hot seat, Ridge, 66, is now stepping down as CEO. Steve Brass, an Englishman from Yorkshire who worked out of the business’ Milton Keynes office until a few years ago, will take his place.
Therefore, could Ridge be persuaded to kiss and tell after retiring?
What a ridiculous idea. It would be like saying that Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken’s executives would ever list the “11 herbs and spices” that go into making their chicken wings “Finger Lickin’ Good.”
Ridge appears confident in his brand commitment. We work in the recollections industry.
We make happy, enduring memories by making the world a better place, he claims.
“My heart and soul will always be with this great tribe that I have had the honor of being a part of for so many years.”
I’ll probably bleed WD-40 if you cut me.
This is a terrible thought, but it should prevent his limbs from creaking as he ages.
The ultimate DIY cure-all is WD-40. Its uses are limitless, even though we don’t know what’s in it.
There is a simple statement on the canister that reads, “Stops squeaks, drives out moisture, cleans and protects, loosens rusty parts, frees stuck mechanisms.”
However, if you dig a bit further, a ton of assertions come to the fore with ease.
On its website, WD-40 does really list more than 2,000 uses. Others are more creative, such as “keeps snow from clinging to satellite dishes” and “removes dog poop from tennis shoes,” while some are a little more basic, such as “removes grime from engines” and “prevents corrosion and rust on pipes”.
Unlisted by the business, but extolled on numerous websites devoted to the virtues of WD-40, are reports that the product works wonders on knotted horse manes and tails, deters pigeons from building balconies and ledges, and prevents mirrors and windows from fogging up (although, presumably, the fogging is replaced by oily smudging). It has also been applied in some quite creative ways.
It was employed by Colorado police to free a naked burglar who had become trapped in an air conditioner. And in Hong Kong, WD-40 once assisted in freeing a python that had wrapped itself around a bus’s undercarriage.
The company maintains that customers who claim they’ve caught some of the biggest fish ever after spraying it on their hooks are bluffing and quickly dispels any notion that a little bit here or there will cure arthritis, as has been frequently reported.
We think this myth originated from people thinking the product must include fish oil since it seems to draw fish. It reads, “Sorry, Charlie, but it just ain’t so.”
In nearly 200 countries, WD-40 generated sales of £400 million last year, with more than £200 million of those sales occurring in Europe.
In contrast, the Rocket Chemical Company, a young company founded in 1953 by three individuals, set out to develop a range of rust-prevention solvents and degreasers for the aerospace sector.
A navy commander’s desperation to find a solution to help the U.S. Navy stop corrosion caused by ocean salts harming the gears on its ships was a contributing factor in this decision.
Chicago-native and regarded WD-40 founder Norm Larsen was one among those assigned to this assignment. However, some believe he has been mistaken for another engineer from Chicago by the name of Iver Norman Lawson.
It took Rocket’s three pioneers 40 tries, working out of a modest lab in San Diego, to create what is known as “a water-displacement formula”; hence the uninspiring name of WD-40.
As the first intercontinental ballistic missile developed by the United States, the Atlas Missile had steel “balloon” fuel tanks that were so thin and delicate that they had to be kept pressurized even when empty to prevent them from collapsing, an aerospace contractor by the name of Convair first used the product to protect the outer skin of the missile.
Convair personnel started taking the product home for personal use over time, and by 1958, it was sold in stores. After a verbal agreement between Rocket and a distributor broke through, Norm, not Norman, quit the Rocket Chemical Company in 1958.
Norm dutifully established Corrosion Reaction Consultants in Philadelphia, but its equivalent of WD-40, CRC Corrosion Inhibitor, wasn’t particularly memorable. It has clearly failed to match the success of the product that inspired it six decades later.
Many attempts have been undertaken over the years to determine what WD-40 exactly is. Wired magazine sent lubricant samples to a lab in 2009 for analysis.
The conclusion was “the goop inside homemade lava lamps,” fish oil, and Vaseline—barely forensic.
A representative in San Diego claims, “The concentrate remains, and will always remain, a secret.”
“It is the concentrate that we transport throughout the world and is then combined with various solutions and solvents.”
WD-40 hasn’t changed much in the previous 70 years, which makes it a marketing dream—except that customers may now choose to purchase a can with a straw, or what the business refers to as a “smart straw.”
Furthermore, it makes no difference what the formula contains. The squirting is the evidence. Anyone confronted with completing a challenging DIY project at home is likely to advise “just give it some WD-40.” And it typically functions.