In 1859, with $1,000 he had saved and another $1,000 borrowed from his father, Rockefeller formed a partnership in the commission business with another young man, Maurice B. Clark. In that same year the first oil well was drilled at Titusville in western Pennsylvania, giving rise to the petroleum industry. Cleveland soon became a major refining center of the booming new industry, and in 1863 Rockefeller and Clark entered the oil business as refiners. Together with a new partner, Samuel Andrews, who had some refining experience, they built and operated an oil refinery under the company name of Andrews, Clark & Co. Slowly, under Rockefeller's supervision, the company began to grow. Rockefeller abhorred waste and devoted considerable energy on increasing the efficiency of his refining business. He believed that the secret of success was attention to detail-to wringing little efficiencies out of every aspect of his business. He hired his own plumber and bought his own plumbing supplies. He built his own cooperage shop and made his own barrels for the oil. He bought his own wagons and horses to transport the wood to the cooperage shop in Cleveland. Nowadays, we would call this "vertical integration", yet Rockefeller was way ahead of his time. .
Rockefeller's style of business was very precise and calculated. He was not a gambler but a planner. Some innovative techniques he used to increase his industry included manufacturing his own barrels and sulfuric acid (which was used in the purification process), shipping oil via tank cars, building huge holding tanks near refineries for storing crude and refined oil with the equipment for drawing off the oil from the tank cars into the holding tanks. Another brilliant scheme of Rockefeller's was to build physical plants to handle all the "waste" products from the refining of kerosene. Soon, the company began manufacturing lubricating oil, gasoline, benzene, paraffin and petrolatum.
