Marketing
& Supply
By KeithReid
Company Profile:
NOCO EnergY Corporation
Mike Newman (L)
and Jim Newman (R)
16
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.
May/June 2013
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.
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 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."
NPN Magazine n www.npnweb.com
