Cost of oil leading to some leaner companies

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"When I found myself looking at the price of oil several times a day, it was too much," CEO Mark Ketchum said. "That's not the way a CEO or any member of management is going to build shareholder value."

Rubbermaid had already restructured, winnowing 40 percent of its product line between 2003 and 2004. As oil rose, management scrutinized the 12 percent of "commodity-like" products it had kept.

The products, including plastic shelving and its cheapest storage containers, had one thing in common: Resin was somewhere between one-third to one-half the cost of sales.

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"We couldn't sell it for what it cost to make it," said spokesman David Doolittle.

Its cheapest clear plastic storage bins, which hold Christmas tree ornaments or sweaters and are pulled out of a closet twice a year, no longer made economic sense, Ketchum said.

"Resin is never going to be a cheap alternative; those may go back to cardboard boxes," he said.

In contrast, the company kept its Roughneck containers, meant for hard use, like recycling bins.

"The consumer is willing to pay a price because they know they're going to beat the heck out of them," he said.

Rubbermaid hasn't released a list of products it will drop, but it has said it will keep making Sharpie pens, Rubbermaid food storage products and Graco car seats, where resin is only 2 to 15 percent of total costs. Higher resin costs would increase those prices slightly, between 1 and 5 percent a year. In contrast, the company raised prices for some of its products as much as 22 percent this year.