Company features diverse portfolio of fuel, lubricants

GIFFORD, Ill. — A company that supplies a diverse portfolio of fuel, lubricants and services to a variety of industries was a new addition to the Midwest Ag Expo.

Thomas Oil Company, headquartered in Franklin, Indiana, had a booth at the Gordyville show to promote its offerings. Other company locations include Farmersburg, Indiana; Richmond, Indiana; and LeRoy, Illinois.

“Thomas Oil Company was established in 1957 and is a family-owned company. We cover the main area of central Indiana, central Illinois and western Ohio,” said Randy Brown, sales director.

The company is a distributor for Petro-Canada Lubricants products, as well as its products under the Thomas Oil Company label.

“We are a Petro-Canada distributor of products that have offerings everywhere from passenger car to heavy-duty engines for fleets, industrial, ag, food. So, they have a wide offering and we’re their distributor for this area. They’re very diverse,” Brown noted.

“Petro-Canada’s claim to fame, and rightly so, is they take the crude oil and it’s double-refined to get the base oil. It’s 99.9% pure. They make white oil out of it so it can be used for food. They use this base oil in all of our products.

“They refine it, blend it, package it out of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, which is a suburb of Toronto, but it’s really a U.S. owned company. It’s owned by HollyFrontier Sinclair, which is called HF Sinclair. A lot of people know the old Sinclair dinosaur. The HollyFrontier Sinclair corporate office is in Dallas, Texas.”

Thomas Oil also offers its own product lines that are blended and produced in Franklin.

Products lines include a selection of industrial lubricants, metal working fluids, automotive and aviation items, diesel exhaust fluid, and cleaners.

Its services include oil reclamation, industrial waste treatment, used antifreeze collection services, used oil collection, and oil analysis.

Customer Service

Beyond selling oil products, the Thomas Oil staff provides additional services to its customers.

“We are consultants, helpers, maintenance people. We can help them out of some dilemmas. We provide training for basic lubrication,” Brown said.

“So, we go into the plant and really become their ‘extra employee’ to help them out, which you need anymore and there are not too many that are doing it. We go out to the plant and help troubleshoot and solve the problems.

“We’re also big into filtration. We help plants and companies do filtration. We handle a number of large companies in this area that people know well like ADM, Waste Management, GFL. We have a pretty wide offering.

“Food is a great thing for us because we’re one of the few majors that has a complete food line for people to use lubricants in food processing.”

Brown said the company’s truck fleet continues to grow.

“In five years, we’ve become a platinum distributor for Petro-Canada. That’s the highest level. We’re really excited that we’ve reached that so quickly,” he added.

“One of sayings that an owner told me 30 years ago was, ‘anybody can sell oil but not everybody can service.’

“We’re still a family-run company. Our company has delivered to my customer on New Year’s morning. They needed oil. The machine was down. We can still do that and deliver with our own trucks.”