The Standard Oil Company (Ohio) was an American petroleum company that existed from 1870 to 1987. The company, known commonly as Sohio, was founded by John D. Rockefeller. It was established as one of the separate entities created after the 1911 breakup.
In the 1960s, the Standard Oil Company partnered with BP, in the development of the Prudhoe Bay, Alaska petroleum reserves and the construction of the Trans Alaska pipeline. The complex partnership called for a gradual stock acquisition until BP would eventually gain controlling interest culminating in total acquisition of the American company. The company ceased operations in 1987, although BP continued to sell gasoline under the 'Sohio' brand until 1991.
History Under the name "The Standard Oil Company (Ohio)", the company was established as a separate business after the antitrust breakup the oil conglomerate's monopoly in 1911. It operated service stations under the 'Sohio' brand name in Ohio but was prohibited in using the 'Standard' name in other states. In nearby states, it used the Boron brand name (introduced in 1954) instead, but with an otherwise-similar logo. Wallace Trevor Holliday was President of the company from 1928 to 1949 and Chairman of the Board from 1949 until his death on November 7, 1950.
In 1968, Sohio's CEO, Charles E. Spahr (Charlie), arranged a merger with BP. It was announced as Standard's acquisition of BP's North American interests in exchange for BP receiving 25% of Sohio's stock. However, the contract included a stipulation that BP would assume majority interest when Standard's share of production from the Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska reached . That occurred in 1978, and BP then took control of Standard Oil. The U.S. operations were unified under the BP America corporate name.
By 1991, BP had rebranded all Sohio and Boron retail stations as 'BP', except for some marine fuel outlets.
In 2011, a BP station in Steubenville, Ohio, that had originally opened as a Sohio station in 1946 ended fuel sales and was restored to 1970s vintage Sohio colors as a museum for Sohio. The site has vintage (inoperable) Sohio pumps and other Sohio memorabilia. The garage itself remains active.
Stations By 1980, Sohio and Boron had 3,400 gas stations in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia. Sohio acquired 5,660 former Gulf stations as a result of FTC anti-trust limitations in Chevron's 1985 takeover of Gulf. These stations, bought for $1 billion, were in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. Sohio was allowed to use the "Gulf" name for five years after the acquisition.
By the end of 1985, all other Standard Oil descendants had minimized use of the name Standard, following Standard Oil of Indiana renaming itself Amoco earlier in the year as well as Chevron's aforementioned merger with Gulf that same year that led to its official corporate name to change from Standard Oil of California to Chevron Corporation. As a result, The Standard Oil Company (Ohio) corporately rebrand itself in 1986 under the Standard name, while continuing to use the Sohio brand in Ohio. In 1987, BP bought the 45% of Sohio it did not already own for $7.82 Billion and assumed control. Among the first changes was the rebranding of all Sohio, Boron, & Gulf stations that it owned to 'BP' in 1991. Among the conversions included former Mobil stations in Western Pennsylvania (including Pittsburgh) that Standard of Ohio acquired in 1987 when Mobil left that market, most of which had just rebranded as Boron when they were converted to BP. From 1989 to 1991, many Sohio, Boron and Gulf stations used BP's color scheme of green and yellow during the transitional rebranding to BP.
The Boron name was used outside of Ohio in neighboring states, like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia. Boron was also the branding of its premium grade gasoline along with its regular grade fuel "Extron" (formerly "X-tane" later "Octron") and its unleaded version "Cetron" introduced in 1970.
Standard Oil's motor oil brands included Boron, Sohio, Cetron, CHD, Duron, Multron, Nitrex, Nitron, Octron, Premex, and Qvo.
Sohio's credit cards, like other oil company cards at the time, could be used at competitors' stations outside the issuing company's competitive territory, which in Sohio's case was Ohio. The benefit died with the Sohio brand. Exxon had a similar arrangement as well. In 1916, Sohio introduced a prefabricated canopy prototype for its stations. Although Sohio gas stations have ceased to exist, a few marina gas stations on Lake Erie and the Ohio River still bear the Sohio name.
When BP merged with Amoco in 1998, its American headquarters moved from the former BP America Building on Public Square in Cleveland to Chicago. Its American headquarters have since moved to the Houston Energy Corridor in Houston, Texas, in line with the corporate offices of Shell and fellow Standard spinoffs ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil.
Subsidiaries Hospitality Motor Inns Hospitality Motor Inns, a wholly owned Sohio subsidiary, operated 11 motor inns in Ohio and surrounding states The company was formed in 1963 as a Sohio subsidiary. Hospitality became a publicly held company when Sohio sold off 51% of the company to the public. Sohio sold its remaining interest of the chain to Hosmin, Inc., in 1978.
ProCare In the 1980s, as many gas stations began converting their vehicle service bays into convenience stores, Sohio wished to continue performing auto maintenance by launching a specialty auto repair shop. Called Sohio ProCare, these shops were often located near Sohio stations that now had convenience stores instead of auto service and were more specialized compared to traditional auto garages located at gas stations. The locations were mostly in Ohio, but Sohio did expand the concept into Pennsylvania and North Carolina, where they were known as "Boron ProCare". Also, unlike many Sohio stations, the ProCare locations were owned and operated directly by Sohio. Commercials for ProCare often featured M*A*S*H actor Gary Burghoff as "That Sohio Guy", as part of a larger Sohio advertising campaign featuring Burghoff. Burghoff himself would stay with BP for a time as a spokesperson after BP converted Sohio and its other brands to BP.
BP retained ProCare following its absorption of Sohio, rebranding it as "BP ProCare" and changing the colors in its logo to match BP. BP continued to operate it until selling the chain to a private investment group in 1999, at which point the shops were simply called ProCare without an oil company prefix and its logo reverted to its Sohio-era colors. Following a bankruptcy under the private investment group's ownership, ProCare would ultimately be acquired by Monro Muffler Brake in 2006, and converted the locations to its own brands.
In popular culture From 1932 to 1985, Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio) sponsored hundreds of consumer-facing films, radio programs, and newspaper columns designed to get the public up and driving, buying Sohio products, and using Sohio service stations. Many of the programs were objective, informative documentaries and travelogues, often with only the subtlest glimpse of the company that paid for them.
Most programs were part of a series titled “Let’s Explore Ohio.” From the 1940s until he retired in 1967, Edward Plumb of Sohio was responsible for the “Let’s Explore Ohio film series.Obituary: Edward Plumb directed films in the ‘Let’s Explore Ohio’ series,” Plain Dealer, June 2, 1980, p. 4BOhio Scene Owes Debt to Sohio in Picture and Text, Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 16, 1950, p. 104 (28-D)
Sohio was a prolific producer and distributor of sponsored films in the 1930s into the 1980s.E.B.Radcliffe, "Out in Front: Industry Takes a Hand in Movies," The (Cincinnati) Enquirer, Apr. 15, 1942, p.9 For many of those years Sohio ran a free film distribution library for schools, civic organizations and institutions. In the 1940s Sohio had a staff of three projectionists touring the state to present movies in the Sohio library.The Hagley Library in Wilmington, Delaware, a library that specializes in preserving American Business History, has digitized and posted the Sohio films from its Cinécraft Productions collections to its digital archive. Sohio was a major client of the studio and the studio kept copies of dozens of Sohio films whether they were produced by the studio or not.
Sohio Is On the Air (1932) focused on two important industries of that time: radio broadcasting and tire manufacturing. Wilding Picture Productions in Chicago made the film.Bob Welchans, “Sohio Is On the Air,” The SOHIOAN, Mar. 1933, pp. 5.
In 1932, Sohio launched a traveling outdoor talking picture show called “The Little Theatre under the Stars.” The show, an early drive-in theatre, traveled from city to city in a specially designed motor truck equipped to project sound motion pictures. Through an ingenious device, the pictures are projected through an opening in the truck's rear, onto a mirror, and then reflected to a large screen attached high above the truck’s front bumper. The screen was translucent, so the film could be watched from two directions. Attendance was free, and the features they showed were mostly Sohio films."Sohio's Little Theatre Under the Stars," The Daily Advocate (Greenville, Ohio),Oct. 1,1934, p. 3"Outdoor Movies Coming Here," Sidney (Ohio) Daily News, Sep. 22, 194, p. 3
The Two Doctors (1934) told the story of a young man, the son of a doctor, who learns to cure the ailments of automobiles by attending a Standard Oil service school. The film aired in the Sohio “Little Theatre Under the Stars.”"Outdoor Movies Coming Here"
Beautiful Ohio (1934) was a two-reel feature shown at the Sohio “Little Theatre Under the Stars.” Scenes in the film included Ohio’s famous caverns, aerial views of the Y-bridge in Zanesville, and the Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio, the largest serpent effigy in the world.
“Beautiful Ohio” was chosen for the Crypt of Civilization, a room-sized time capsule, built between 1937 and 1940, at Oglethorpe University in Brookhaven, Georgia. The film was in good company. Producer David O. Selznick donated an original copy of the Gone With the Wind script to accompany the films included in the preservation effort."Sohio contributes Its Movie ‘Beautiful Ohio’ to Crypt of Civilization: 6,000 Years Hence, Film Will Tell the Beauties of Ohio,” The SOHIOAN, April 1940, p. 8-12.
The Sohio newspaper column program began in 1935 with a weekly series of one-quarter-page illustrated newspaper columns about Ohio history. The only evidence that the piece was supplied by Sohio was the words “courtesy Standard Oil Company of Ohio” in small script, where the artist's signature would normally go on the bottom right of the etching illustrating the short story."The Standard Oil Company: Thrilling 'Ohio from the Air," The Bryan (Ohio) Democrat, Jul. 30, 1936, p. 5
Ohio from the Air (1936) is thought to be the first picture taken entirely from an airplane. It took more than 2,500 miles of flying to take a bird’s eye look at Ohio in the sound, black and white movie.“Fisherman to see Pictures of Ohio,” Sunday Times Signal, Apr. 4, 1937, p. 19
Ohio Sketch Book (1936) highlighted the work of the state highway patrol, the building of the world’s second-largest reflecting telescope, and other interesting events.“Ohio Theme of Kiwanis Program,” The Zanesville Signal, Mar. 25, 1936, p. 10
Wings Over the Crowd (1936), was filled with aerial thrills from the National Air Races.Glenn C. Pullen, “Expo Theatre Shows Vivid Ohio Movies,” The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), Jul. 29, 1936, p. 8