LEE OIL COMPANY CELEBRATES 30 YEARS
Lee Oil Company/Lee’s Food Mart/Lee’s Travel Center is celebrating 30 years of being in business thanks to their loyal customers and employees.
On August 8, 1988, Lee Oil Company began in Ewing, Virginia by two brothers, Gary and Terry Lee.
Terry was working as a purchasing manager for Cypress Coal Company. His job description included negotiating contracts with petroleum companies. “That allowed me to research the oil industry, where I saw somewhat of a void in the marketplace, some of the distributors were getting up in age, I saw the opportunity to fill that void” explained Lee.
It all started with a truck and a driver, that driver was Gary Lee.
Their bookkeeper was Peggy Grabeel of Rose Hill, Virginia.
Their office of operations was out of Terry and Wanda’s home in Ewing, Virginia. They actually moved their youngest son Wesley out of his bedroom into his brother Rodney’s room to create an office for Peggy to work.
Their first convenience store they serviced was a little store located in Flatwoods, Virginia called Bacons Grocery. He didn’t have pumps so the brother purchased pumps and hauled them in the back of a pickup truck to put them in.
Through hard work and dedication, which created growth, they were able to move into an office trailer in Ewing, Virginia.
By 1990, the brothers opened their first convenience store located in Dogwood Heights Shopping Center in Tazewell, Tennessee.
In 1998, the company purchased S.A. Mars, Jr. Inc. With this purchase, the company had grown to where the brothers relocated the corporate office to Middlesboro, Kentucky where it is still located today. Thru individual store purchases and the acquisition of the following individual companies: Lanningham Oil of Pennington Gap, Virginia; S.A. Mars, Jr. Inc. of Middlesboro, Kentucky; Shumaker Petroleum of Oneida, Tennessee; Finish Line Petroleum of Knoxville, Tennessee; Petroleum Marketers of Jonesville, Virginia and Marsh Petroleum of Greeneville, Tennessee. Since that beginning, a total of 44 convenience stores have been added and is owned and operated by Lee Oil Company/Lee’s Food Mart.
“Part of the growth of any oil company is finding distribution,” explained co-owner Terry Lee. “It was very difficult for us to find people who had the money or expertise top open convenience stores. So, we found it necessary to develop them ourselves.”
“In the old days, the easiest thing for us was to find someone who had opened a convenience store and then, we could just sell gas to them. But, we found it difficult to find people with the hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to build the type of store, with the type of parking space for our tankers, that we needed” he said.
Those stores are located throughout East Tennessee, Southeast Kentucky and Southwest Virginia. They operate under several brands which include: ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, BP and Marathon.
Lee Oil Company/Lee’s Food Mart understand that their customers depend on consistent employee base and takes great price, not only in the quality of staff but also in the longevity of their employment. Lee Oil Company/Lee’s Food Mart currently employs 366 employees.
As Lee Oil Company and its subsidiaries celebrate their 30th Anniversary, the success and future of the company is being carried on by the next generation.
“We have been very fortunate to have many fine employees. The most important asset to any business is the quality of its employees,” Terry said. “And without our loyal customers, we would not have been able to grow to the extent we have.”