Success Story
 War-Time
Marketing Upsets Services Along
Home Front As Retail Outlets Shrink
The impressive war
effort of the Sinclair operating companies was
only 24 percent of their total business. The
other 76 percent was service to the home front.
Every normal marketing activity was changed. War
shortages caused oil to be delivered in glass
containers and greases in cardboard. Hundreds of
women were trained as "service aides"
in retail stations. Rationing disrupted normal
customer relations in gasoline and TBA sales.
 
Unprofitable
outlets succumbed rapidly. By mid-1943 the total
of company-owned and leased service stations had
shrunk from 10,000 to 6,500 and independent
franchises proportionately. But government
regulation ended price wars and stabilized
costs, while promotional expenses were
negligible. As a result, net earnings averaged
$21 million during the war years, a record at
that time.
 Unique
Terminal In Washington
The new products
pipeline spurred retail growth throughout the
middle Atlantic states, the Pennsylvania steel
towns and the nation's capital. Ability to
deliver fuel oil to "keep the home fires
burning," developed a major business of
permanent importance. By Act of Congress,
Sinclair thrust a products pipeline terminal
into the District of Columbia.
The pipeline's
Ohio River terminal permitted the line to be
reversed, carrying mid-continent refined
products, barged up the Mississippi, to the
eastern industrial cities and to Sinclair's big
pre-war marketing area. Thus in the stress of
war, Sinclair was
 able
to build for the return of peace.
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