The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding
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Company profile Company Profile: NOCO Energy Corporation How one company uses the power of family to build an empire By Keith Reid Mike Newman (L) and Jim Newman (R) N OCO Energy Corporation is celebrating the type of milestone this year that most companies only dream of—80 years in business. The story is typically American, with an entrepreneur seeing an opportunity and taking the risks to turn that opportunity into a successful enterprise. Two subsequent generations in this family-owned company each built upon the success of the previous, to take the operation to new levels of success. Multi-generational, family-owned companies are not all that unusual in this industry, nor is successful entrepreneurship. What might be unusual in many cases is how smoothly the process has run, not only with the transitions of leadership, but with a dramatic expansion and diversification of the company's operations. 20 NOCO today distributes a full portfolio of energy products, including residential and commercial fuels, natural gas, electricity, and lubricants. In addition, NOCO operates 34 NOCO Express retail convenience stores and supplies branded and unbranded gasoline to a growing dealer network. NOCO employs over 800 employees across New York State, Vermont, Pennsylvania, as well as Ontario, and operates a fleet of over 180 vehicles. The company was founded in Tonawanda, New York in 1933 by Reginald B. Newman. Donald F. Newman, Reginald's son, describes how he played a key role in the operation being founded. "My mom and dad were married in 1932 during the depression," he said. "My dad was called in to the office where he worked and was told that since his wife also worked and he and my mother were living with his in-laws, he was getting a pay cut. Now, I was born about nine months and 15 minutes later during March of 1933. He went back in and said, 'My wife can't work anymore and I would like to be able to get a home for my new family.' His boss said that was too bad, and my dad quit on the spot. He went out and borrowed a couple of hundred dollars from my maternal grandmother and went to the bank and borrowed a few hundred more dollars and bought his first coal truck in July of 1933, and he went door-to-door peddling coal." The move to fuel oil began in 1939 when the company purchased its first 1,000 gallon tank truck. The first oil deliveries were made using a spigot on the back of the truck with the driver filling a couple of 5 gallon cans filling the tanks through a funnel. "When they had the first hose reel, they MAY 2013 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com would pull that out but had to reel it in with a big crank," said Don. "I remember as a kid and when we got the first electric hose reel, everybody died and went to heaven, but the only problem was that it ran the battery down too fast." The company offered "full oil service" that included getting the tank in the basement and installing, maintaining and servicing the heating appliances. As a young man, Don went out with his father while the process was under way of ripping out the old coal grates and putting in oil tanks and oil burners. "When I was a young teenager, I learned how to fix oil burners," Don said. "I remember Dad would come home after a couple of cocktails, and he would make me go down in the basement and take the oil burner apart and put it back together. When I was a kid, I used to pull hose and fill up oil tanks. The ticket was easy to calculate back then because oil cost $.10 per gallon." In 1950 Reginald Newman expanded the company's focus to begin servicing commercial and industrial customers with lubricants, gasoline and diesel fuel. Reginald's two sons, Don and Reginald B. Newman II, joined the company in 1954 and 1960, respectively. They continued the family tradition of growth by broadening NOCO's product lines and marketing area. The next move from traditional residential oil heating came during the 1960s with a move into commercial and industrial No. 6 oil that was distributed to churches and hospitals and schools. It was at this point that the company began buying its first large tractor-trailer vehicles. In 1964, NOCO expanded its operations to include service stations. Typical for the