C o m p an y Prof i l e
Loud and Proud
From Simple Beginnings to Fueling a Different Kind of Fleet
by KENT CRAWFORD
Mike Tasha, right, and managed by his son, Kabraul, is the delivery of large amounts of fuel to ocean-going vessels. One of these is the Atlantis, a research and education ship operated by the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, MA, USA, that can be out to sea for six months at a time.
M
illions of people collect baseball cards, stamps
or coins, but Mike Tasha has made his mark
collecting something a little more esoteric: oil
companies. Or, more specifically, oil companies that make their home on the insular
stretch of Massachusetts known as Cape Cod. Tasha hails from
Provincetown, Mass., which is located on the far northern tip of
the Cape Cod peninsula as it juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. He
acquired his first oil company – Cape Cod Oil Co. – in 1974 with
his wife, Halcyone, and since then he has completed enough subsequent acquisitions to make the Tasha name ubiquitous around
the Cape in regards to fuel delivery, service and supply.
"I've been in the oil business for all of my working life," said
Tasha. "When I got out of high school I went to college for a year
in Boston, but decided that really wasn't for me. So I came back
and worked for a company called Cape Cod Oil for several years
before I purchased it in 1974."
26
SEPTEMBER 2013 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com
That set off a series of acquisitions over the next 20 years for
Tasha, who added Frank's Oil Co., Canal Fuel Co., Mooney Fuel
Co., East Ham Discount Oil and Cape Cod Propane, among others, to his portfolio. The routine was the same for each acquisition
– he and Jason would buy the company, maintain its established
name and run it as an autonomous business.
All in the Family
One of Tasha's last major purchases occurred in 1994 when he
acquired Loud Fuel Co. of Falmouth, Mass. At that time, Tasha
also was completing the purchase of Mooney Fuel Co., while his
son, Kabraul, had just returned home from a few years away at
college and decided that he wanted to enter the family business.
With Mike concentrating on the new Mooney Fuel business, he
gave Kabraul the keys to the Loud Fuel operation.
"At that point, Loud Fuel was a pretty small company, around
a million gallons a year," Mike Tasha explained. "He took a
