Pure Oil

Pure Oil Company was a major American petroleum company founded in 1914.

History

Early history

Three companies operating in the United States have used the Pure Oil name. The first began as a group of independent oil refiners, producers, and pipeline operators, in fall 1895 in Butler, Pennsylvania, with headquarters in Pittsburgh, although it was incorporated in New Jersey. Pure was organized by independent interests to counter to the dominance of Standard Oil Company in the Pennsylvania oil fields, and was the second vertically integrated oil company (after Standard) in the region. Operations were based in Oil City, Pennsylvania. David Kirk was elected the first president. He was succeeded in 1896 by James W. Lee. The company sold illuminating oil in Philadelphia and New York City. They also built bulk terminals in Amsterdam and Hamburg and competed in Europe with Standard Oil, the Nobel and Rothschild families, and Deutsche Bank.

Pure Oil Producing Co. was incorporated in 1902. In 1904 a refinery was built on the Delaware River which received from the United States Pipe Line. This increased to by 1906. The Pennoil tanker delivered oil to Europe.

Dawes period

Beman Gates Dawes and his brothers, whose Columbus-based Ohio Cities Gas Company had begun in 1914, made an offer of $24.50 a share for the company. Dawes was building an Oklahoma refinery, and Pure Oil had production capabilities there which would benefit his company. The Pennsylvania company accepted the offer and made $22 million in profit on the sale.

In 1920, the Ohio Cities Gas Company was renamed Pure Oil. In 1926, the headquarters moved to Chicago. Refineries were located in Ohio, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Texas.

In the late 1920s Pure Oil made a contract to deliver gasoline and oil to another Ohio gasoline company, Hickok Oil Corporation of Toledo Ohio. The contract called for Pure Oil to be paid in stock such that on August 1, 1945, Pure Oil would own Hickok.

By the 1960s, sales were $700 million a year, and Pure Oil ranked as one of the country's 100 largest industrial companies. Over 1,000 worked in the Chicago area. The headquarters at that time were located in unincorporated Palatine, Illinois now Schaumburg, Illinois, in a building which is now a campus of Roosevelt University. The company motto was "Be Sure With Pure."

Union 76 and decline

Union Oil Company of California (Unocal) purchased Pure Oil in 1965. Initially, Pure Oil's Refining & Marketing operations became the Pure Oil Division of Union Oil Company of California with the Pure Oil name continuing in full force. By 1970 the Pure Oil brand was phased out and remaining service stations and auto/truck stops were rebranded as Union 76. The Pure Oil Division was merged with Unocal's west coast Refining & Marketing division to become the Union 76 division.

After 1970, the Pure Oil name was retained as a registered trademark, while the Firebird brand name was retained and used primarily for motor oils and lubricants that were not extensively marketed toward consumers.

In 1992, Unocal announced plans to end Southeast operations. The Union 76 brand was taken over by Phillips 66 while Unocal was later bought by Chevron Corporation.

In 1996, Pure Oil became the holding company for three independent pipeline companies. By 1997, operations in Europe ended.

Pure Oil, and later Union 76, was "The official fuel of NASCAR", a relationship that lasted until 2003. Sunoco replaced Union 76 as the official fuel of NASCAR.

Pure Oil Jobbers Cooperative

The Southeastern Oil Jobbers Cooperative, Inc. (SOJO), began as a result of Unocal's departure from the Southeast. Independent operators wanted a cooperative "of marketers, by marketers, and for marketers", which would let members make decisions on their own. Each member joins by buying a share of stock and paying an initiation fee. Since 1996, the members have received a dividend every year.

The cooperative provides signs and images to member stations for consistent marketing of its products. It has the right to the Pure Oil brand name and Firebird logo for selling Pure Oil and SOJO petroleum products in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. It also has the right to expand the use of the name and trademark anywhere in the United States.

In 2008, the cooperative changed its name to Pure Oil Jobbers Cooperative.

Service stations

Pure Oil opened its first service stations in Dayton, Ohio in 1918. Initially, its stations were an architecturally heterogenous blend of both buildings Pure Oil had constructed and those designed by companies it had purchased.

Edwards type stations

In 1923, Pure Oil decided to establish a uniform style for its gas stations. E.C. Miller, a Columbus, Ohio architect, was hired to design a standard type of station, which was then produced by the Edwards Manufacturing Company of Cincinnati in prefabricated kits. His design was classical in nature, with a gently sloping roof, wide eaves, and large windows. This design was further refined and adjusted by Carlos Dawes in early 1925, but executives were unsatisfied with the minor changes Dawes had made and decided for a major overhaul in the company's architectural style.

English cottage stations

Carl August Peterson, an experienced gas station architect, was hired in late 1925 to lead the company's new marketing construction department. Peterson aimed to create a design with cheap construction and material costs, but that still had a distinct and recognizable appearance. Additionally, he was also required to display Pure Oil's blue and white corporate livery prominently in his design, while making the structure acceptable in neighborhoods that were opposed to brightly colored gas stations.

In 1927 Pure Oil unveiled Peterson's final design, which he called the "English cottage." It featured a design reminiscent of private homes as an effort to make the stations comfortable for motorists, and incorporated many aspects of the popular Tudor revival architecture of the time. These included details such as rounded doorways, chimney pots, window shutters, and flowerboxes.

In addition to the home-like structural design, the stations were designed to make their corporate affiliation obvious from a distance. The walls of the building were made of white brick and the roof was covered in gloss blue Ludowici tile, specified in spite of its expensive cost because of its non-fading properties. These features gave the stations a balanced divide between the two corporate colors of Pure Oil.

Peterson oversaw and designed many variations on his initial design to account for economic, geographic, and other regional differences. The English cottage became an icon for the company, with more constructed into the 1930s. Pure Oil produced birdhouses and radios designed to look like their stations and found they were big sellers. A half-size replica produced for the 1933 World's Fair was a top attraction.

The final variant of the English cottage design was introduced in 1946, and from that point on Pure Oil began to embrace influences of Modern architecture in their stations. Peterson retired from Pure Oil in 1957, and the company stopped making his English cottages after Pure Oil's merger with Union Oil in 1965.

Since Pure Oil's end, many of their former stations have been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

References

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External links

Pure Oil Jobbers Cooperative, Inc.

Defunct oil companies of the United States
Defunct companies based in Texas
Petroleum in Texas
Union Oil Company of California
Energy companies established in 1895
Non-renewable resource companies established in 1895
Non-renewable resource companies disestablished in 1965
1895 establishments in Pennsylvania
1965 disestablishments in Illinois
1965 mergers and acquisitions

Cooperatives based in South Carolina