Vickers_gasoline_truck_1954,_Wichita,_KS

First Vickers Service Station built 1954 in Haysville, KS

Vickers Petroleum Company was an

oil company The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The largest ...

founded by John A. (Jack) Vickers, Sr. In 1918, Vickers established a

refinery A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries ...

Potwin, Kansas Potwin is a city in Butler County, Kansas, Butler County, Kansas, United States. It is named after the town site land owner Charles Potwin. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of the city was 421. History Early hi ...

to process the output of recently discovered oil fields in Butler County.

Wichita Vickers basketball

By the 1950s, Vickers had 300 employees, controlled a chain of 300 service stations in an area from

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to th ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

, and fielded the Wichita Vickers, an

Amateur Athletic Union The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is an amateur sports organization based in the United States. A multi-sport organization, the AAU is dedicated exclusively to the promotion and development of amateur sports and physical fitness programs. It h ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

team playing in the

National Industrial Basketball League The National Industrial Basketball League was founded in 1947 to enable U.S. mill workers a chance to compete in basketball. The league was founded by the industrial teams (teams sponsored by the large companies and made up of their employees) be ...

. The team was successful, winning a share of the 1957-58 league championship. Dick Boushka, a member of the United States basketball team in the 1956 Summer Olympics, was a standout player. Vickers discontinued its team sponsorship in 1960 due to competition with the NBA for players, but Boushka remained with the company and became president of Vickers Petroleum in 1963.

Service stations

In the 1950s, Vickers built service stations with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof design. The only remaining building with this design is the Vickers Petroleum Service Station, built in 1954 in Haysville, Kansas. It was listed on the Kansas Historical Resource Inventory on August 3, 2019 and on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

on September 30, 2019.

Purchase and breakup

In September 1968,

Swift and Company JBS USA Holdings, Inc. is an American food processing company and a wholly owned subsidiary of the multinational company JBS S.A. The subsidiary was created when JBS entered the U.S. market in 2007 with its purchase of Swift & Company. JBS speci ...

announced its intention to buy Vickers and the related Bell Oil Company. By March 1, 1969, the acquisition had been completed, and Jack Vickers, Jr., was made a director of Swift. In 1973, Swift changed its name to Esmark and created a new subholding company, Vickers Energy Corporation. Vickers Energy was broken up and sold in 1980. Total Petroleum (North America), Ltd. purchased the refining and marketing assets of Vickers Petroleum, including a refinery in Ardmore, Oklahoma, pipelines, and 350 service stations.

Mobil Oil Mobil is a petroleum brand owned and operated by American oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil. The brand was formerly owned and operated by an oil and gas corporation of the same name, which itself merged with Exxon to form ExxonMobil in 1999. ...

purchased oil and gas producing unit TransOcean Oil. Doric Petroleum, a

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

processor, was sold to Petro-Lewis Corp. Total continued to use the Vickers name in marketing until 1993. After the sale of the company, members of the Vickers family, including sons Jack, Jr., Robert, and Thomas, remained notable civic and business leaders in both

and

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to th ...

References

External links

* {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150612020235/http://www.haysvilleonline.com/hol/archives/72-Vickers-Service-Station.html , date=June 12, 2015 , title=Vickers Service Station, describing the preserved 1954 station in Haysville, Kansas Defunct oil companies of the United States Companies based in Wichita, Kansas Non-renewable resource companies established in 1918