keep the tradition going! perfect gift: parents/kids/grandkidS/ANY hess fan

by Wayne Henderson

INTRODUCTION: All of the North Carolina based brand names listed below that existed in 1940 participated in the construction of a petroleum terminal in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1941. They owned the facility jointly, and in 1957 independent refiner Delhi-Taylor took over part of the operation to serve as a source of product supply. This terminal operation is what ties all of the companies together with HESS; Billups, Gant, Etna, McCoy, Service, and Travelers, except the later operations Wilco (and Trade Oil) that were an outgrowth from Travelers-Etna. HESS got involved with their purchase of Delhi-Taylor, becoming the primary supplier to the brands listed below.

The North Carolina Brands:

TRAVELERS:  Travelers Oil, later Taylor Oil, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Terminal City Oil, Wilmington, NC

Founded in 1935 as Greyhound Oil, Winston-Salem, Greyhound’s founder Roby Taylor took on a partner, Bill Sisson in 1936. Bill built up a chain of stations in eastern North Carolina, while Roby worked in the Triad and south. In 1940 they sold the Greyhound name to Moore, Inc of Atlanta, that was franchising Greyhound stations nationwide, and renamed their operation Travelers Oil. The partners split the operation during WW2, but both continued use of the Travelers name, image, and some advertising functions were shared. In 1960 Sisson’s operation, based in Wilmington and known as Terminal City Oil Company, bought out exclusive rights to  the Travelers name. In the late 1960s Sisson sold out to Sun Oil, who then operated Terminal City as a subsidiary and took on Travelers as a secondary brand. Sisson continued to run the subsidiary until his retirement. In 1991 all of the Sun Oil subsidiary holdings in North Carolina were grouped together into Mid-State Oil, a Lexington, North Carolina based jobber that Sun had also purchased, and the newly consolidated Mid-State Petroleum was spun off to independent owners.  Mid-State inherited the Travelers brand in the process, and they continue to use it at second and third tier locations today. If nothing else changes, it will be  the only one of these brands that remains in use after the HESS/Speedway rebrand, with the possible exception of the Edenton Etna referenced below. 

ETNA:  Taylor Oil, Winston-Salem, NC 

Taylor Oil, the remnant of the original Travelers Oil above, began opening stations in a new territory, northeastern North Carolina, in 1956, under the  Globe Oil Company subsidiary name and Etna brand. When Bill Sisson’s Terminal City bought out the Travelers name in 1960, the entire operation took on the Etna brand. The Etna brand was built up until 1999, when all of the Etna sites were leased out to The Pantry and the brand name was sold  to them. The Pantry continued to operate two stations, Edenton and Chapel Hill under the Etna brand. A quick look at Google Earth, which may or may not be current, shows the Chapel Hill station, now a privately owned Marathon, but as of this writing, the Edenton station retains the Etna brand. 

WILCO:  A.T. Williams Oil Company, Winston-Salem, NC

In 1963 Arthur “Tab” Williams, Roby Taylor’s son-in-law, bought seven operating Etna stations and renamed them all Wilco. They built the Wilco network up across North Carolina, Virginia and surrounding states, and in the early 1980s got into the travel plaza business. In 2001 Wilco formed a joint venture  with HESS, WilcoHESS, to now operate the chain’s stations under the HESS brand. Then in 2004 they bought out most of the retail operations of Service Distributing [Servco] and rebranded the stations to Wilco. WilcoHESS sold out to HESS in 2015, with some rights to use the Wilco-to-Go store name for several years.  The Wilco operation, now owned by HESS, is part of what HESS had agreed to sell to Speedway. Rebranding to Speedway followed. 

TRADE:  Trade Oil Company, Greenville, NC

Walter Williams, Tab Williams’ brother, founded Trade Oil in Greenville, North Carolina in 1976, buying several old Etna stations of which he had been the district manager. The chain built up in eastern North Carolina, and in 2005 became involved in the WilcoHESS operation, taking on the HESS brand. No one is sure if Wilco (Winston Salem) bought out Trade (Greenville) outright, or whether it was just a branding arrangement. Greenville based stations then displayed the Trade-Wilco name and sold HESS gasoline. 

SERVICE DISTRIBUTING:  Service Distributing Company – Albemarle, NC  

The old timer of North Carolina petroleum marketing, Service Distributing was founded in 1933 in Albemarle. At their peak in the 1980s they operated over 100 stations, but had abandoned some sites in the 1990s, several of which dated back to the 1930s. In 2004 Service Distributing, branded mostly as Servco (still were a few old Service Plus sites), sold most of their retail operations out to Wilco. Older stations were either rebuilt by Wilco, leased to independent operators, or abandoned. The last location known to display the Servco brand (Still had a Servco sign on the building) has branded Citgo within the past few years. It was on Hwy 127 just north of Hickory. 

GANT:  Gant Oil Company, Walkertown, NC

Founded by James Gant in Walkertown in 1917, by 1927 he began building a chain of retail Gant stations across North Carolina. From memory, an investment group, based in Durham, bought the company in the 1990s, and then in 2003 another group, based in Panama City, Florida and operating under the Exprezit brand bought out the entire operation. Some original locations remain in operation under the Exprezit brand. The last known Gant station was rebranded as a Citgo in Kernersville, North Carolina in 2012. 

MCCOY:  E.R. McCoy Oil Company – Charlotte, NC

E. R. McCoy was part of that group, as well. Based in Charlotte, McCoy operated stations all along U.S. route 74 in North Carolina and in parts of South Carolina. They were part of the group that built the terminal in Wilmington in 1941, and part of the Delhi-Taylor supplied group after Delhi took over supply at the Wilmington facility. McCoy never had any large stations or convenience stores, just old time discounter stations. During the 1970s, with the death of the founder, McCoy fell into the hands of family members. Most of the original operation was sold off, and supply contracts were sought for independent dealers, marketing under the Cavalier brand. McCoy/Cavalier also acquired several old Tenneco sites and operated them for a while. Apparently the second gas shortage of 1978-1979 finished the operation off. Note that there is some indication that the Charlotte based independent Beaty Brothers was tied to McCoy, as well. They operated from about 1932 until about 1962. 

The Non-North Carolina Brands: 

BILLUPS:  Billups Brothers, then Billups Petroleum, Greenwood, Mississippi (pre 1959 split)

Billups was founded in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1926 and was originally a Texaco jobber. In 1935 they began promoting the Billups brand, and built up a chain of  over-the-top discounter stations. Large neon signs with chasing lights, and mirror-backed stations where merchandise for premium redemption was kept was typical of Billups stations in the postwar era. In 1959 the company was split into two components, Billups Eastern (Jacksonville) and Billups Western (Hammond, LA). Billups Western was sold to Signal Oil and Gas, who was building up their retail market all across the south. In 1970 or 1971 Signal sold the Billups Western operation to Charter Oil, who operated stations under the Billups (and other) brands until the mid-1980s. Billups Eastern remained with the Billups Family, who sold an interest in it off to Delhi-Taylor. In 1963 HESS bought Delhi-Taylor and in doing so, acquired an interest in Billups Eastern. About 1965 HESS bought the remaining portion of Billups Eastern and the stations were rebranded to HESS during the 1966-1968 period. Billups, that had long sold toys, and had offered their branded toy truck for years, is thought to have been the originator behind the annual Christmas trucks [that Hess copied]. [Emphasis by Mike] 

HESS:  HESS Incorporated (1933), HESS Oil and Chemical (1962), Amerada HESS (1969), then HESS Corporation (2006). All New Jersey.

Founded in 1933 from HESS family interests in a coal dealership, HESS became a fuel oil distributor and terminal operator, building ever larger storage facilities  in metropolitan New York. In 1960 they opened their first retail gas station, in Oakhurst, New Jersey, and began expansion by acquiring older major brand stations and remodeling them for use under the HESS brand. They bought Olixir (expanding through New York), Delhi-Taylor (bringing the HESS brand to various Delhi holdings, including Billups Eastern), a 50% interest in the Meadville Companies, and continued to expand. After some retrenching in the 1970s during the shortages, they continued on as a simple gasoline retailer, expanding into convenience stores in the late 1980s. In 1999 they bought the remaining shares of Meadville and rebranded the Merit stations, found from New England to Richmond, to HESS. After an agreement not to operate in North Carolina in exchange for supply arrangements with all of North Carolina’s leading independents (see list above) HESS formed a joint venture with Winston-Salem based Wilco in 2001, bringing  the brand back in to widespread use in the state (they had opened several stations in Wilmington, away from their supplied customers, prior to the Wilco merger). The Wilco merger put HESS into convenience stores seriously for the first time, as many of their sites has remained gas-only since the 1960s. In 2013 they bought out their merger partner Wilco, in preparation for the sale of the HESS retail network. In May 2014 it was announced the Marathon’s Speedway division had  formed an agreement to purchase HESS, and would complete the transaction this fall. Stations would be rebranded Speedway over the next three years, and after selling a 50th anniversary HESS toy truck in their stations at Christmas in 2014, all the future truck offerings would be available by online mail order only. 

Even more info can be found in “One Hundred Years of Gas Stations” by Wayne Henderson, where stations from all of the featured brands are pictured, and in “Gas Pump Globes”, by Wayne Henderson and Scott Benjamin. Over 2,100 station photos are featured in One Hundred Years of Gas Stations and over 5000 globes are pictured, along with company histories, in Gas Pump Globes. Copies can be ordered directly by contacting Wayne Henderson at pcmpublishing@triad.rr.com 

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