National Petroleum News (NPN) has been the independent voice of the petroleum industry since 1909 as the opposition to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. So, motor fuels marketing and retail is not just a sideline for us, it’s our core competency.
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MARKETING & SUPPLY BY KEITHREID Breaking bulk since its very beginning DOUGLASS DISTRIBUTING ters location. As the company history notes, in 1947 Exxon established a railroad bulk plants in Sherman and Gainesville, Texas. On July 1, 1981, Bill Douglass bought out the Exxon consignee in Sherman, Texas. Included with the purchase was an Exxon transport division, an Exxon tank wagon division, an Exxon lubricants division and a TBA (Tires, Batteries & Accessories) division. D Brad Douglass, Douglass Distributing OUGLASS DISTRIBUTING STARTED OUT WITH a single bulk plant and that same bulk plant plays a core role in the company's current business opera- tions and serves as its headquar- also available 24 hours a day/7 days a week. The retail division now owns and operates 14 co-branded sites and employs over 200 team members. "We literally started with the bulk plant that was built in 1947 by Exxon Company USA and came complete with the overhead tanks and was originally served by rail," said Brad Douglass, the company's second-generation owner. "By 1981 when we start- ed, the rail was gone, but it still operated as a bulk plant in that we were bringing in transports and then breaking bulk into tank wagons. At that time our business was very much agriculture-based, but as the farms were being bought up in the 1980s and 1990s for residential real estate develop- ment, we had more and more of our trucks move to off-road." Douglass noted that this required the changeover from smaller 2,000 gallon tank wagons to larger 4,500 gallon tank wagons. "When we started, everything was top loading, but of course, we're now all bottom loaded," said Douglass. "And we bottom load them here at the office, and we take the fuel out, and we can load it at the pipeline terminal and either bring that product back here or route our trucks in such a way that we can keep them bouncing around the Dallas-Fort Worth area." In 1983 the operation expanded into retail with its first store (Lone Star #4) located at 1716 Texoma Parkway in Sherman, Texas. In 1988, Exxon withdrew from the delivery of fuel and Douglass Distributing Carrier, Inc. was established and began transporting fuel. Today, Douglass Distributing moves 130,000,000 gallons of fuel annually. In addition the company distributes lubricants, propane and DEF. The carrier group consists of 15 trucks that run 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week with drivers on staff with access to all local terminals. Douglass also maintains a mainte- nance staff of eight full-time technicians, which are 18 MAY/JUNE 2012 Geographically, the plant is at the northern tier or top of the triangle the company serves that encom- passes Fort Worth, Dallas and Sherman. That area includes multiple pipeline terminals the company can pull product from, helping to reduce inefficiency as the trucks move between these and the plant. As is common, the bulk plant serves a core role supporting commercial operations in addition to helping facilitate the supply of smaller marinas that can be found on a number of area lakes. There is still an agricultural business although that is a declining part of the company's portfolio. Construction is the largest market segment and NPN Magazine n www.npnweb.com