Baton Rouge area - our history

fuel equipment of the past

“filling it up” made easier over the years
The modern-day Exxon and Mobil fuel stations evolved to meet the demand of the increasingly crowded U.S. highways. In 1908, the year before the Baton Rouge Refinery was built, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey had some 3,500 retail gasoline outlets in the country. But these were hardly “gas stations” in the modern sense. Grocery stores, livery stables and even street carts stocked Jersey Standard products. Gasoline was in barrels and above-ground tanks and had to be drawn off in five-gallon cans to then be poured through a funnel into the car’s tank.

In 1912, the underground storage tank led the way to some of the first modern fuel stations. The first pumps were produced in West Springfield, Mass., by Jersey Standard’s affiliate Gilber & Barker Manufacturing Company. Resembling a bicycle pump, the new mechanism was faster and cleaner than the messy process of drawing gasoline from a barrel. In 1929, the first electronically-powered meter pump showed the motorist precisely how many gallons were delivered into the tank. 

progressing from mules to tank trucks
In the beginning, mules were the power that carried the refinery’s products to their destination. Well over half of Standard Oil’s sales were delivered to retailers by some 300 tank wagons. Tank wagons were especially useful in the city limits, where a horse or mule could cover a daily route dotted with a large population of retailers. It was said the tank-wagon mules of Baton Rouge knew their routes so well that they would make regular stops without a word from the driver.

As gasoline surpassed kerosene in sales, so, too, the gasoline-powered truck slowly supplanted tank wagons. Tank trucks replaced wagons by the late 1920s since they could bring deliveries to sprouting fuel stations quicker. During winter, the trucks began to supply residential heating oil virtually door-to-door to customers.