Gas station brands appearing in new areas

[jamcool]

Here in the Seattle area, I seem to remember that BP entered the area by buying up the Exxon operations here. That was followed by purchasing Mobil stations here too! That was in the days before Exxon and Mobil merged. Then BP sold their stations to Tosco and Tosco had a license to use the BP name. A few short years later, Tosco purchased the 76 Brand from Union Oil. Tosco then also purchased Circle K stores. Not too sure of the timeline but I think BP came back to the West Coast by buying Arco and AM/PM and made Tosco give up its BP branding. That might have been after the 76 purchase! Now here in the west, we now have BP only owning the Arco operations in the Norhwest and Norhern California with Marathon owning the rest and BP owning AM/PM, including the Marathon supplied Arco sites. Also Tosco/76 is now part of Phillips 66 and Conoco operations with Circle K being sold off! As for Sinclair, I’d never seen it in Western Washington until I saw it in Vancouver but had seen it in Eastern Washington in the past! It also seems the Exxon and Mobil have played musical chairs in Washington State. After they had left Western Washington, they had both come back. But now it seems that I now only see one Exxon in Western Washington in Blaine. I mostly see Mobil in Western Washington and Exxon in Eastern Washington. As for Gulf, they used to be in the Seattle area up until the late 1970’s. So it’s interesting to see that they are back down in Vancouver! I also remember Phillips 66 in that same time period!

You see fewer and fewer Am-Pm stores in Phoenix nowadays, a lot of them have converted to Arco with the generic “Food Mart” signage-mostly older AM/PM sites.

[Alpha8472]

The quality of AMPM has gone down in recent years. There is an AMPM in Dublin, California that has had its soda machines and Icee machines broken virtually all the time for the past 3 years.

When you go there, there is nothing to drink except for bottled drinks and if you are lucky old coffee.

They never have hot foods and they are always out of stock on cookies and baked goods.

Perhaps it is because of the free cookie, free medium drink, or free sandwich you can often win on the AMPM app. You just check in and play the scratcher game and win a food item.

The store is always dirty and rundown looking. The ancient gas pumps look like something from 20 years ago with a chip card reader glued to it. There are always at least 2 pumps out of service.

Maybe AMPM has low standards.

I do see a ton of ARCO food marts now. AMPM is going extinct.

[bryceleinan]

It appears that after multiple trademark ownership changes the storied Gulf brand has quietly expanded into the Pacific states on top of the Exxon,Mobil,and Sinclair brands quietly expanding in NorCal.

I have seen Gulf in Brea and Perris already in SoCal. Stations appear nice and clean from the exterior with good signage. Haven't been inside to see what the interior operation is like. Also seeing more Exxon branded stations that otherwise look just like Mobil. Somebody told me there is now a Marathon station in SoCal somewhere although I'm wondering if they just saw the former Arco refinery which is now branded Marathon.

The one Texaco station I knew of in Buena Park had very sharp and clean looking signage, pumps, etc. but it has been rebranded to Chevron. I think I mentioned elsewhere that even if they didn't intend to dump the Texaco name on Hawaiian Energy it appears that is their action as they're removing remaining Texaco signs from the continental US as all Hawaiian Chevrons become Texaco.

There are a few Gulf stations in NorCal - one of the newer ones is in Susanville, otherwise, there are a few scattered in the greater Sacramento area.

[storewanderer]

Phillips/Conoco can't figure out their branding. In California many times I would see Conoco branded brochures, sometimes even decals on pumps instead of 76. They became hated throughout California for taking down and smashing the famous 76 orange "ball" spherical rotating signs and replacing them with flat, red plastic junk in the name of "consistent branding with our fellow brands." A fan made a website, savethe76ball.com and garnered international attention by highlighting the destruction of these commercial landmarks. Eventually after destroying many of them, the company listened and decided to put back 100 of them around the West. The website is still alive and seeing side by side pictures of the friendly 76 ball icon next to the ugly 76ConocoPhillips flat gray tower is revolting.

They have actually semi-separated the marketing for the 76 brand from the rest of Conoco/P66. They have some outside company marketing the 76 brand in some states. I forget the exact details but various 76 stations in odd non-west coast territories they have tried to pop up have nothing to do with Conoco/P66.

If you ever go to Ponca City, OK go to the Conoco museum and if you ever go to Bartlesville, OK to go the P66 museum- very interesting. Also two totally different atmospheres at those two museums. They are run mostly by retirees of the company.

I find 76 to be a pointless brand. Never the best price, never the best facility, there is just no point..

[storewanderer]

The one Texaco station I knew of in Buena Park had very sharp and clean looking signage, pumps, etc. but it has been rebranded to Chevron. I think I mentioned elsewhere that even if they didn't intend to dump the Texaco name on Hawaiian Energy it appears that is their action as they're removing remaining Texaco signs from the continental US as all Hawaiian Chevrons become Texaco.

There are still a lot of Texaco stations in Texas and New Mexico.

Chevron brand is not very strong in these other territories like it is in CA/OR/WA.

[jamcool]

Phillips/Conoco can't figure out their branding. In California many times I would see Conoco branded brochures, sometimes even decals on pumps instead of 76. They became hated throughout California for taking down and smashing the famous 76 orange "ball" spherical rotating signs and replacing them with flat, red plastic junk in the name of "consistent branding with our fellow brands." A fan made a website, savethe76ball.com and garnered international attention by highlighting the destruction of these commercial landmarks. Eventually after destroying many of them, the company listened and decided to put back 100 of them around the West. The website is still alive and seeing side by side pictures of the friendly 76 ball icon next to the ugly 76ConocoPhillips flat gray tower is revolting.

They have actually semi-separated the marketing for the 76 brand from the rest of Conoco/P66. They have some outside company marketing the 76 brand in some states. I forget the exact details but various 76 stations in odd non-west coast territories they have tried to pop up have nothing to do with Conoco/P66.

If you ever go to Ponca City, OK go to the Conoco museum and if you ever go to Bartlesville, OK to go the P66 museum- very interesting. Also two totally different atmospheres at those two museums. They are run mostly by retirees of the company.

I find 76 to be a pointless brand. Never the best price, never the best facility, there is just no point..

It used to be Chevron-Standard and 76 were the premier service station operators in the West…emphasis on service and clean stations and restrooms.

[SamSpade]

I find 76 to be a pointless brand. Never the best price, never the best facility, there is just no point..

TopTier^TM fuel, usually at a price point lower than Shell or Chevron. At least, that's how I perceive it in Oregon. Otherwise, yes, very different c-stores and pump experiences everywhere.

[Brian Lutz]

Out of the major brands in the West Chevron and Arco are probably the only ones with a reasonably consistent corporate branded C-store experience with the ExtraMile and AMPM brands respectively (AMPM still seems to be pretty stable in the Seattle area even if it isn't elsewhere, no real expansion or contraction to speak of.) Jacksons operates a lot of the Shells in that area, but beyond that most C-stores at Shell stations seem to be unbranded one-offs..

76 in that area seems to have bounced around a fair bit, for a while having Circle K branded stores, then later that got dropped and they went to "My Goods Market" branding for a while before finally settling on Rocket. In the Seattle area it looks like all Rocket locations are 76 branded, but in the LA metro area they seem to also have a few locations branded as "Limited Oil" as well as a handful of Chevron, Shell and other generic branded (Gasco) stations. I've also noted a number of the gas stations that still have garages attached to them (which generally don't have C-stores) seem to be 76 branded, but those are becoming increasingly rare.

Fundamentally, there seems to be a difference in the way gas stations operate in the west and east. In the West the locations are mostly treated as gas stations with a store attached to them (with the possible exception of 7-Eleven but they have little real competition in a lot of markets so they tend to treat gas stations as an afterthought, and many of their locations don't have gas at all.) In the Eastern and central US you still have decent amounts of those types of operators, but you also get the bigger operators like QuikTrip, Sheetz, Wawa, Maverik, Kum N Go and Casey's General Store which seem to run more as convenience stores that happen to sell gas (although some of their locations on major highways will also sell truck diesel as well.) Somewhere in between those you have the big truck stop operators in Love's, Pilot Flying J and TA that stick almost exclusively to the major freeways and seem to be somewhere in between those two, trying to build locations with the general public in mind but with the vast majority of their revenue coming from professional drivers, so for as much as they try to cater to the general public fundamentally they're still truck stops.

[Alpha8472]

The 76 Station down the street from me was awful. It had a cashier booth and a locked shelf of food items. The gas pumps were old and constantly broken. It finally closed a few months ago. Then they suddenly tore it down and are building a new gas station with what appears to be a large convenience store.

I always though the 7-Eleven next to it was the convenience store, but apparently they are separately owned. How can you have a 7-Eleven behind a gas station and then build a new convenience store in front of the 7-Eleven practically blocking the 7-Eleven from being seen from the street. These two competing businesses must hate other.

I don't know if the new gas station will be 76 or something else.

Circle K has been replacing many unbranded convenience stores at gas stations in the San Francisco Bay Area in the past few years. A few years ago many Rocket convenience stores replaced the old 76 My Goods Market stores in the area.

[storewanderer]

I find 76 to be a pointless brand. Never the best price, never the best facility, there is just no point..

TopTier^TM fuel, usually at a price point lower than Shell or Chevron. At least, that's how I perceive it in Oregon. Otherwise, yes, very different c-stores and pump experiences everywhere.

Isn't Arco usually cheaper still though?