Excellent points, as always, Johnny. However, back to point, Shell has done an incredible job establishing itself with the Owner Operator group yet is one of the few "foreigners" to have done so. Obviously they have kept the aspect of their home office quietly to themselves..
I had heard at one point that the Exxon Mobil merger came about not because the two wanted to get together but that someone *very* high up in the State Department said, "Look, gentlemen, we are losing too much of our U.S. oil power base overseas. We think it would be a good idea for you two to join, thus enabling the largest oil company in the world to be a U.S. company." Which does make some sense as it did not make much sense for the two biggest U.S. competitors to get together as there really was not a lot of synergism between the two.
So far, it really has worked out pretty well, tho.
But it is difficult to keep track on the score cards! Who owns who, who is really producing what!??
I remember a while back when a good friend/Kendal Oil distrubor of long standing delivered his second load of Kendal from the Sunoco plant after the Bradford, Pa. Kendal plant was shut down. It was a 6,000 gallon load of engine oil. The customer had been using Kendal for years. The customer called my friend saying he had received the wrong load as it must be ATF. Sample taken and sure nuff it was bright, bright red! Came to find out that the last thing Sunoco did before a load of "Kendall" left was to dump a bucket of dye in it to make it "Look like Kendal". Murphy had hit and they put in 2 buckets.. Red..... He had to eat the load as Sunoco said it met specs. He cancelled his Kendal contract that day...
George
[ August 10, 2002, 08:16 PM: Message edited by: GeorgeCLS ]