Wayne fuel dispensers, Cities Service and Pure Oil Companies

Wayne Dial face with computedf metering 

Pure Oil Company

There have been three companies that have operated in the US that have used the Pure Oil name. The first Pure Oil began as a group of independent oil refiners, producers, and pipeline operators, from Butler, Pennsylvania headquartered in Pittsburgh, even though the company was incorporated in New Jersey in fall 1895. The Pure Oil Company came about because of the dominance of the Standard Oil Company in the Pennsylvania oil fields and it was organized by independent interests to counter the dominance. Pure Oil was the second vertically integrated oil company (after Standard) in the region. The operations were based in Oil City, Pennsylvania. In 1896 David Kirk would be elected as the first president but was succeeded by James W. Lee in 1896.

 In 1900, Pure Oil would become a holding company for three independent pipeline companies. Pure Oil Producing Co. was incorporated into the company in1902 and by 1904 pure had finished a refinery which had been built on the Delaware River and would receive 600 barrels a day from the United States Pipe Line, Which would increase to 1800 barrels a day by 1906. When Pure Oil would ship their oil to Europe they would use Penn oil tanker to deliver their product.

One of the products that Pure Oil sold to Philadelphia and to New York City was illuminating oil (kerosene) and Standard Oil was their major competitor on the east coast. Pure Oil also built bulk terminals in Amsterdam and Hamburg; they wanted to compete with Standard Oil in Europe. By 1917 Pure Oil had over extended its operations in Europe so they ended their operations.

By this time Cities Gas Company a Columbus-based Ohio Oil Company had begun to make offers to buy out the company and made an offer of $24.50 a share to buy out the company. Cities Gas Company was building a refinery in Oklahoma, and Pure Oil had production capabilities that would benefit this company. So in 1917 the Pennsylvania company accepted the offer and made $22 million in profit on the sale.

In 1920, Ohio Cities Gas Company's would change its name to Pure Oil. In 1926, Pure Oil headquarters would move to Chicago. The Company now had refineries that were located in Ohio, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Texas. One of the first Pure Oil Gas Station was built in 1933 and located in Saratoga Springs; New York and it was registered in 1978 with the National Register of Historic Places. Pure Oil ranked as one of the country's 100 largest industrial companies in the 1960s sales were over $700 million a year. The company employed over 1000 people just in the Chicago area. The company motto was "Be sure with Pure." that motto was used because it was said that some filling stations and oil companies were adding water and chemicals into their fuels and Pure wanted to assure their customer that they were getting the very best product.

Union Oil Company of California would make an offer and purchase Pure Oil in 1965. Shortly after the acquisition by Union Oil it would change the name of Pure Oil's Refining & Marketing operations to the Pure Oil Division of Union Oil Company of California with the Pure Oil name continuing in full force. When the 1970s came along the Pure Oil brand would be phased out and the remaining service stations, auto and truck stops would be rebranded as Union 76. The Pure Oil Division would fully merge with Union Oil's west coast Refining & Marketing division and become the Union 76 division. The Pure Oil name was still retained as a registered trademark and used the Firebird brand name primarily for motor oils and lubricants that were not extensively marketed toward consumers. In 1992, Unocal would announce their plans to end Southeast operations. The Pure Oil lives on as part of Unocal still today.


The Cities Service show below belonged to Ed Gesch Farm. Most of the town of Willmar, MN. is built on that farm. This pump is just one of the few items that were purchased from the farm.

Glass Fuel Cylinder with Ten Gallon Indicators

1920's Base and Body features hand pump to dispense gasoline

Wayne name plate

Certification plate features Model number 519 and Serial number 27802

Body and Pump Handle

Fill Pipe for either above ground or under ground storage tanks

nossel

The Wayne Pump Company
Fort Wayne Indiana
The Wayne pump company was founded in 1891 by employees of the S.F. Bowser of Fort Wayne, Indiana,. The company had a hard time deciding on an official name, sometimes advertising as the Wayne Oil Tank & Pump Company and the Wayne Tank & Pump Company. It wasn’t till 1928 the company began using the name Wayne Pump Company. Until then they used the name Wayne Oil Tank Company they began producing retail kerosene storage tank and pump combination for use in hardware and grocery stores to dispense kerosene. In 1907, they began production of gasoline pumps, and in 1918, they introduced what is considered to be the first true visible pump Model 276v. Wayne concentrated on production of visible gas pumps throughout the 1920. by 1928 the now newly named Wayne Pump Company had purchased Fry equipment and Boyle Dayton manufacturing and was ready to introduced the first clock face metering pump. Despite the many innovations, the Wayne Pump Company was near the point of bankruptcy and what saved the company was the invention of the computing mechanism that became industry standard for all gasoline dispensing equipment for the next 50 years. Wayne Pump Company licensed the computer to Veeder-Root manufacturing in 1934, the company was from Hartford, Connecticut, Veeder-Root manufactured gauges and metering devices and the Veeder-Root computer was made available to other pump manufacturers with-in a year or two. The Wayne Pump Company was never really given the credit that they deserved for their innovation. The timing was just right for the invention, that and a few new pump designs was what saved the company.
In 1951 Wayne Pump Company took a step forward and purchased an interest in the Martin & Schwartz pump operation. They were a division of Symington-Gould who were one of the industrial and railroad components manufacturer . The majority owners insisted the gas pump manufacturing operations would be consolidated in the Salisbury, Maryland.
The Wayne Pump Company merged in 1958 with the Symington-Gould to form Symington-Wayne. Some of the innovations that took place in this era included the development if the first twin pump using one single-width 500 series cabinet it was the first to have two complete pump systems combined. Sun Oil pioneered the first blending system, Wayne being the innovators that they were built the first custom blender model 511 in 1956 in conjunction with Sun Oil and introduced at few selected Sunoco stations in Buffalo New York, Indianapolis, and Norfolk, Virginia. Wayne developed a new cabinet design and a new model 511D and this new design was also use with the custom blenders at Sunoco stations throughout the east.
Dresser Industries the industrial giant absorbed the Symington-Wayne into it fold in 1968 and separated the service station equipment business from other their other manufacturing pursuits. Dresser Wayne would once introduced a new innovation with the first electronic gasoline dispensing equipment to their lineup of innovations in 1975. Dresser Wayne ceased operations in Salisbury, Maryland in 2001 and moved it’s operations to Austin, Texas where even today Dresser Wayne is still one of the leading innovator and one of the leading manufacturers of retail petroleum equipment. Dresser Wayne pumps can be found in many modern stations today.

Cities Service

 Oil entrepreneur Henry Latham Doherty started Cities Service in the early 1900s. Doherty would quickly become a leader in the manufacturing of gas and electric utilities. Doherty created his own organization, Cities Service Company in 1910, to supply gas and electricity to small public utilities. Doherty began by acquiring gas producing properties, then moved on to acquire distributing companies and tied them into a common source of supply. The company then developed a pipeline system, tapping dozens of gas pools. This was to make the gas available to its consumers. Cities service developed a plan to use slack demand periods to refill their depleted fields near their customer base. This way gas could be inexpensively withdrawn during peak demand. Cities service was the first company in the mid-continent to use this method.

Doherty being the business man that he was decided the next logical step was to develop a program to find and develop supplies of natural gas that would help his company move into the oil business. By doing this it would mark a major discovery in Augusta, Kansas in 1914 and later that year in El Dorado. Cities Service subsidiary, Empire Oil & Refining discovered the Oklahoma City field, one of the world's largest. They would also participate in the discovery of the East Texas field, which, in its time, was the most sensational on the globe. Cities Service would also go on to completed the nation's first long-distance high pressure natural gas transportation system in 1931. It was a 24-inch pipeline that would stretch some 1,000 miles from Amarillo, Texas, to Chicago, Illinois.

 At the height of Cities Service's growth, Congress would go on to pass the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. This would force Cities Service to change itself of either being utility operations or get rid of its oil and gas holdings. The decision was difficult but Cities Service elected to remain in the petroleum business. The first step was to liquidate investments in its public utilities which took place in 1943. This would affect over 250 different utility corporations.

Around the same time the US government was almost at completion of a major refinery at Rose Bluff near Lake Charles, Louisiana. This refinery would eventually become the foundation of the company's manufacturing operation. The government would use designs that were developed by Cities Service and the Kellogg Co., the plant would be dedicated only 18 months after the first concrete was poured. The refinery would open a month before Allied troops would land in France; the refinery would turn out enough of the critically needed 100-octane aviation gasoline that the bombers would need to fuel the 1,000 daily bomber sorties that would take off from England to Germany. With enough Government funding through the Defense Plant Corporation (DPC) also prompted Cities Service to build plants to manufacture butadiene which is used to make synthetic rubber, and toluene, which is a fuel octane booster and solvent. In the years that follow Cities Service would see growth and become a fully diversified oil and gas company with operations around the world.

Cities Service Company first inaugurated use of the CITGO brand would happen in 1965 (officially styled "CITGO") was used for its refining, marketing and retail petroleum businesses which became known inside the company as the RMT Division, for Refining, Marketing and Transportation. CITGO would continued to be used only a trademark, and not the companies name until it was sold 1983 to what had been the RMT Division of Cities Service to Southland Corporation. Eventually Southland Corporation would sell 50 percent of CITGO holdings to Petróleos de Venezuela in 1986 and would acquire the remainder in 1990 which would result in the current ownership structure.