The company that made Phillips 66 gasoline began in 1917 as Phillips Petroleum Company, founded by L.E. Phillips and Frank Phillips, of Bartlesville, Oklahoma. In 1927, the company's gasoline was being tested on U.S. Highway 66 in Oklahoma, and when it turned out that the car was going 66 miles (106 km) an hour, the company decided to name the new fuel Phillips 66.[1]
The first Phillips 66 service station opened November 19, 1927 in Wichita, Kansas. [2] The first station to be built in Texas was built in 1929 at McLean.[3] [4] Both of these stations have been preserved by local historical societies.
The Phillips 66 shield logo, created for its link to the highway of the same number, was introduced in 1930 in a black and orange color scheme that would last nearly 30 years. In 1959, Phillips introduced a revised version of the shield in red, white and black, a color scheme still used by ConocoPhillips for the brand.
From the late 1930s until the 1960s, Phillips employed registered nurses as "Highway Hostesses," who made periodic and random visits to Phillips 66 stations within their regions. The women inspected station restroom facilities to ensure they were well cleaned and stocked. The Highway Hostesses also served as ambassadors for the company by directing motorists to suitable dining and lodging facilities.
Phillips was among the first oil companies to introduce a multi-grade motor oil, TropArtic, in 1954. Such motor oils were designed to be used year-round in automobile engines, as opposed to single grades for which different grades of motor oils were recommended to meet weather variances.
Phillips also had gasoline stations in Canada's western provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan under the name Pacific 66 until the late 1970s. In 1946, Phillips purchased the Utah-based Wasatch Oil Co., bringing the Phillips 66 brand to the northern Rocky Mountain states and the far eastern portions of Oregon and Washington. In 1966, Phillips entered the West Coast market by purchasing Tidewater Oil Company's refining and marketing properties in that region. At that time, all Flying A distributorships and service stations in the far west were rebranded Phillips 66.
In 1967, Phillips became the nation's second oil company, after Texaco, to sell and market gasoline in all 50 states, by opening a Phillips 66 station in Anchorage, Alaska. However, Phillips' experiment in 50-state marketing was short-lived. The company withdrew from gasoline marketing in the northeastern U.S. in 1972 (although they are recently making a comeback), and sold the former Tidewater properties on the West Coast to The Oil & Shale Corporation (Tosco) in 1976.
Phillips 66 stations have been well represented at toll road concession areas in several states, most notably Kansas and Oklahoma.
The advertising slogan from the mid-1970s until the ConocoPhillips merger was "The Performance Company," promoting not only the performance of Phillips 66 gasoline and other petroleum products, but also innovations with asphaltic materials, fertilizers and other non-automotive products. Other slogans through the years have included "Go First-Class — Go Phillips 66", "The Gasoline That Won the West" and "At Phillips 66 It's Performance That Counts".
Phillips purchased Tosco, which included Circle K convenience stores and Union 76 gasoline, in 2000. Two years later, Phillips merged with Conoco to form ConocoPhillips. The merged company markets gasoline and other products under the Phillips 66, Conoco and 76 brands. ConocoPhillips licenses the Phillips 66 brand to Suncor Energy for its Phillips 66 branded stations in Colorado.[5]
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