Why Did K.C. Irving Keep Expanding During the Great Depression?

Shane Parrish says K.C. Irving kept expanding through the Great Depression because fewer people were trying to grow and there was less competition.

In October 1929 the stock market crashed. People stopped buying cars, and many stopped driving the ones they owned. Around New Brunswick, automobiles showed up with the engines pulled out and horses hitched in front, because gasoline cost money and horses could eat grass. Competitors cut back, postponed expansion, and waited. Irving did the opposite and acted as if the Depression were not happening. A man who joined Irving Oil in 1930 later could not remember the boss ever mentioning it. Years later Irving explained the advantage he saw in bad times. You had to use your head, he said, and you could not sit around sucking your thumb.

He stayed on the road three or four days a week looking for stations to buy, often eating a chocolate bar for lunch. He borrowed against one business, bought another, and borrowed against the larger one. A rival manager told a staff meeting that Irving would be gone in two years. Two years in, Irving went to a motor show in Montreal and bought the nicest Cadillac there, black, for $11,000. He said he did not want a Lincoln. He wanted a Cadillac, and he drove it everywhere so people could see he believed in tomorrow.