Gas station brands and names

[Slow Car Sport Mode]

Primarily in the US.. What gas station brands have. Turned into what? (Like for example.. Amoco turning into BP, why you usually don't see an actual Amoco aside from the occasional legacy-themed branded station..) Texaco turned into Chevron? Or.. some of the information is dated and some I've forgot.

Thread is about what stations you remember when younger, what they turned into, and how gas station "branding" goes... ️

 

[PimTac]

The one that comes to mind right off were the Ritchfield stations. Then they were renamed Atlantic Ritchfield after the merger. Later the name was shortened to ARCO.

 

[John105]

We have a new one, Sinclair. And they sell race fuel. Expensive too. Hess became Speedway. Isn’t Exxon and Mobil same today?

 

[MNgopher]

Primarily in the US.. What gas station brands have. Turned into what? (Like for example.. Amoco turning into BP, why you usually don't see an actual Amoco aside from the occasional legacy-themed branded station..) Texaco turned into Chevron? Or.. some of the information is dated and some I've forgot.

Thread is about what stations you remember when younger, what they turned into, and how gas station "branding" goes... ️

Actually BP relaunched the Amoco Brand in 2017. Their main purpose was to provide an opportunity to open more stations primarily for existing BP jobbers - who had locations close to one another. A consumer may not want to buy BP gas, but Amoco is OK, etc...

 

[PimTac]

We have a new one, Sinclair. And they sell race fuel. Expensive too. Hess became Speedway. Isn’t Exxon and Mobil same today?

Exxon and Mobil have been the same for a long time but I am seeing some Exxon stations being rebranded as Mobil. Sinclair is an old brand name but someone bought the name rights if I remember correctly.

 

[Wrenchturner44]

When I was a kid I worked in a Texaco station. Texaco was the dominant brand in the area where we lived. There was also Sunoco, Cities Service, Gulf, Standard Oil (before Amoco), Fina, Deep Rock, Vickers, and Shell. All are gone now, and Phillips 66 is the dominant brand now. Shell became Circle K, and we also have a fair amount of QT stations. About a year ago we had a Wally's open on HWY 44.

 

[trbostjr]

I was a Sunoco dealer in Charlotte from 1972 to 1985. Glad to see it's still around. Sunoco 260 had 103.6 octane. We could advance base ignition timing way up on some engines for extra horsepower.

 

[oldhp]

I started at Gulf. Worked at Sunoco, Standard and finished at Shell. The funniest is Kum & Go stations.

 

[Bud]

The main ones where I grew up were Esso, Sunoco, Hess, Shell and Sinclair.

 

[k1xv]

Cities Service became Citgo

In the USA, Esso, Enco, and Humble became Exxon. Which then merged with Mobil to became ExxonMobil

Jenney gas stations in Massachusetts were sold to Cities Service, which became Citgo

Atlantic and Richfield merged, becoming Atlantic Richfield, later renamed ARCO.

BP bought SOHIO to enter the US Market

Chevron was formerly Calso on the East Coast

Gulf oil co got bought by Chevron, but the Gulf trademarks got sold and are still in use regionally

Texaco got bought by Chevron, but to satisfy antitrust objections, many stations were sold to Shell.

Hess left retail operations and sold its stations to Speedway

 

[BHopkins]

When I was a kid, the dominant brands were Chevron, Standard, and Texaco. There was an occasional Gulf, Sinclair or Phillips 66 around.

Today, Utah is dominated by Maverick and Chevron, with a spattering of Sinclair, Shell, Exxon, Love's, and of course all the store brands.

Chevron has owned Texaco for a very long time. But just recently they have started rebranding the remaining local Texaco stations, to Chevron.

@John105, where are you, that Sinclair is expanding into? Curious, as Sinclair has been a stable gas station brand here in the West for as long as I can remember. There are two Sinclair stations in the small town I live in, both which have been around for a very long time.

 

[bullwinkle]

We had a bunch of Gulf Oil stations around here-they got bought by Chevron & virtually disappeared in the ‘80s (brand resuscitated like Sinclair was), & a TON of Sohios (Standard Oil of OH) that became BPs, and then started going away too. When I was a kid you “couldn’t swing a dead cat” without hitting a Sohio here-they were literally everywhere!

 

[Soft Cars]

I miss the brand name Texaco.

 

[Wrenchturner44]

I was a Sunoco dealer in Charlotte from 1972 to 1985. Glad to see it's still around. Sunoco 260 had 103.6 octane. We could advance base ignition timing way up on some engines for extra horsepower.

I was always fascinated with the Sunoco blend pumps.

 

[RAR]

When I was a little kid, I remember the corner service station (where you could have your car serviced, not just a fuel depot with microwave sandwiches like today)… it was a DX. Down the road was a Skelly station.

I used to fuel my car back in high school at the local Standard, or the service station that was Standard, Amoco, then Union 76. There were Deep Rock fuel stations for a while but they vanished by 1986.

Sinclair stations were here in the Twin Cities metro area a dozen years ago when I still lived in the area. My nieces called it the Dinosaur Gas station.

We’ve had Total, Tesoro, Marathon, Citgo where I am but it’s mainly Cenex, ARCO, Holiday, Shell and some others nowadays.

 

[PimTac]

When I first started driving I fueled up at a privately owned service station that had a garage. The sign said Hancock but I’m sure that was old.

A couple of blocks from home we would sometimes stop at the Douglas service station. We drank water from their hose during the summer months. We got our tire patch kits there for our bicycles.

 

[Finklejag]

In the PNW, Sinclair is rebranding other brand stations. They must be giving deals to the franchisees to switch brands. I just noticed a Texaco station just rebranded to Gulf. I haven’t seen a Gulf station on the west coast since the early 80’s.

When I lived in Texas and Colorado, I remember Total and Fina. Seeing a Belgium and French gas stations in the US was strange.

 

[Wrenchturner44]

i forgot to add Sinclair (Dino) to my listing above.....we still have some of those.

 

[Jesse_NE]

They didn't get very far, but Terror Free Oil circa 2007, lol. I think they only managed to open one station in Nebraska. I know that they bought fuel from Sinclair, who admitted that it's not possible to guarantee that no middle eastern oil made it into their products. The place closed like three years later.

 

[CharBaby]

I remember when ESSO turned into EXXON in 1972.
I was working at my Dad's ESSO gas station when it all changed. The same can be said for when Bank Americard changed to VISA.
We were changing all of our signage in '72. Well, we didn't do the actual sign changes, the companies came in and made the changes.