TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: From our Archives: History of Standard Oil and Bell System


Re: From our Archives: History of Standard Oil and Bell System


Steve Sobol (sjsobol@JustThe.net)
Sat, 04 Jun 2005 21:18:58 -0700

Mark Cuccia wrote:

> Standard Oil of Ohio

Owned the Sohio and Boron brands in Ohio, Pennsylvania and
elsewhere. BP eventually rebranded the Sohio stations as BP stations,
in April 1991, at the culmination of a process that apparently started
in the late 1960s. Mark doesn't say much about it, but apparently
there was some special arrangement between Standard and BP at that
time that led to BP buying Sohio.

I worked at a BP station in Cleveland for a couple years starting in
December 1991. Boy, were people *fuming* about the purchase of Sohio,
a local refiner, by a British company. It was a fun time to be a BP
employee. OK, perhaps not fun, but definitely interesting.

Sohio, incidentally, was the only company allowed to use the Standard
Oil name after the breakup, and right up until BP started rebranding
Sohio stations, there were a ton of gas stations that said "Standard
Oil" on one side and "Sohio" on the other...

> Standard Oil of Indiana was organized in 1889 by Standard Oil of New
> Jersey. Indiana Standard became separated from Jersey Standard in the
> "trust bust" of 1911. They marketed their products using the Standard
> name in a fifteen state territory in the midwest. Through mergers with
> other companies, they were able to market under the names Pan-Am,
> American and Amoco by the early 1920's. In 1956, Indiana Standard
> bought Utah Oil and began marketing out west under the name Utoco,
> using the same red-white-blue shield with torch and flame. By 1960 or
> so, they changed all Pan-Am and Utoco stations to either American or
> Amoco. By the early 1970's, all American stations were changed to
> Amoco. They didn't drop the use of Standard as a name at that time. I
> don't know if the red-white-blue oval shield with torch and flame logo
> still carries the name "Standard" in the mid-west. (Pat?)

I was in various places in the Midwest throughout the 90s, and lived
in Northeast Ohio, where Amoco had a large presence -- and I don't
think I recall seeing any stations with the Standard logo.

> The Ohio Oil Company was founded in 1887 and was taken over by the
> Standard Trust in 1889. It was separated from the Trust in 1911. In
> 1962, Ohio Oil acquired Plymouth Oil and changed its name to Marathon,
> which it had been using for marketing purposes since the late 1930's.

> Trust. Conoco's logo was a minuteman soldier. In 1929, Continental
> merged with Marland Oil, which had the red triangle logo, and the new
> merged company used the Conoco name and the Marland triangle logo.

Wow. I never realized Marathon and Conoco were originally Standard
spinoffs.

Marathon is now Marathon-Ashland Petroleum, and owns the Marathon,
Ashland and Speedway brands. ConocoPhillips owns Conoco, Phillips 66,
76 (the old Unocal brand), and the Circle K convenience store chain.

> name. I'm not sure if US West or Ameritech has the Bell logo with
> their corporate name, as a local service provider.

Ameritech used to put the Bell logo on their phonebooks. SBC doesn't.

JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638)
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED

"The wisdom of a fool won't set you free"
--New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle"

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In much of the midwest area now, Amoco
does business as 'The Standard Oil Division of Amoco Oil Company'. PAT]

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