My brother used to patronize an off-brand station to fuel his '54 Ford, and for a couple of winters they gave customers a little (1 or 2 lb ?) bag of traction grit with a fill-up. It was actually very practical.
In the warmer months, a fill-up would result in being “gifted” with a roll of toilet paper, which–I guess–was also pretty practical.
Western NY Had Moblil, Exxon Sunoco, Atlantic-Richfield ,Texaco and Shell and an off brand, Hambleton that gave out their own trading stamps .
I worked at two different Mobile stations and the actual business name was Succony-Vacuum. I thought Mobil gave out the best free maps. I am talking 1950s.
Mobil’s corporate name was originally Socony-Vacuum, but in later years it was changed to Socony-Mobil.
Socony stands for Standard Oil Company of NY.
Ivanho Minnesota has a Sinclair station or at least the sign, but that’s the only one I know of.
Me too. My first credit card was a Mobil card. The maps were reason #1, I also had an uncle in Texas who worked for Mobil. “Mobil ohl.”
I always liked Sinclair’s dinosaur theme. What I recall most of long-ago gas stations was what happened when you pulled in. 2 or 3 employees would greet you & start to work, besides refueling, cleaning your windows, asking if you want them to check the engine oil level, tire pressure, etc. The high-octane gasoline was called “ethyl” as I recall. If you said “fill it with ethyl”, that made you a high roller … lol …
In So Cal of the 60’s, I remember Union 76, Phillips 66, Flying A, Chevron, Exxo (later Exxon), Mobile, Texaco, Shell, Gulf and a bunch of self-serve off brands usually attached to a liquor store.
Everyone in town that had a dent in their car got those orange horse shoes and stuck them in the dent.
That was Standard Oil of Ohio. We had Standard oil. In Ohio it was Sohio
Yeah, but that Mobile brand was only sold in Alabama.
The different Standard Oils resulted of the breakup of the original. So Sohio was a different company than Socony than Amoco (Standard Oil of Indiana) than Chevron (Standard Oil of California), etc.
That was pretty much regional. In the Northeast, people said “high-test” or “premium”. When out-of-staters would pull into our NJ station and ask for “Ethyl”, one of the other guys would say, “Ethyl’s out today. How about Lucy?”
Yup!
What was once J.D. Rockefeller’s immense Standard Oil Company was broken-up into many parts:
In 1909, the Department of Justice sued Standard Oil for its monopolistic practices, resulting in a 1911 U.S. Supreme Court decision that broke the giant corporation into 37 separate companies. Standard Oil’s disaggregated parts still constituted many of the largest and most important oil companies in the world, including Standard Oil of New Jersey (later Exxon), Standard Oil of California (Chevron), and Standard Oil of New York (Mobil).
It was before my time, but there was a Wadhams in Hartford, WI. It became Mobil - but IDK if it was just that one Wadhams or some or all Wadhams.
I think a standard oil card was all I ever had in school. Pretty universal since there was always a standard station around. Couldn’t use it much anyway since you still had to pay for it 30 days later.
I recently read or heard that the reason he initially gained a competitive advantage was that he used rail road tanker cars to ship his oil while everyone else was using barrels.
Was that to be used for the toilet paper oil filters that were popular once upon a time? 
Growing up near Portland Oregon in the 1950s we would frequent the Bomber Gas Station. This gas station had a B17 bomber on the roof that I used to play in. The old gas station is gone now but I can remember sitting in the cockpit pretending to fly the huge plane.
Remember the sit-com Dinosaurs?
Main characters were gas/oil company names:
George Sinclair
Ethyl Phillips
Roy Hess
Bradley Richfield
Note: I think “Ethyl” was a brand name for the anti-knock, octane booster, hence the earlier post about people requesting ethyl when getting gas.
Best with Uniroyal Tiger Paw tires!
Now I can highjack the thread with a comment about advertisement about tires-bicycle tire ad, character names Roy and Al when the tire company was US Royal.
Back to Mobil, our top line tires had Mobil Pegasus images molded in the sidewalls.
I guess you mean Rockefeller. His competitive advantage was relentless improvements in productivity, and that may include the rail car shipments you mention. He also made loans to his competitors, banking on their inability to keep up with him. When they couldn’t make payments, he took over their operations.
