Standard Oil is the common name for a corporate trust in the petroleum industry that existed from 1882 to 1911. The origins of the trust lay in the operations of the Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founded in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller. The trust was born on January 2, 1882, when a group of 41 investors signed the Standard Oil Trust Agreement, which pooled their securities of 40 companies into a single holding agency managed by nine trustees. The original trust was valued at $70 million. On March 21, 1892, the Standard Oil Trust was dissolved and its holdings were reorganized into 20 independent companies that formed an unofficial union referred to as "Standard Oil Interests." In 1899, the Standard Oil Company acquired the shares of the other 19 companies and became the holding company for the trust.
BNSF Railway is the largest freight railroad in the United States. One of six North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 36,000 employees, 33,400 miles (53,800 km) of track in 28 states, and over 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that provide rail connections between the western and eastern United States. BNSF trains traveled over 169 million miles in 2010, more than any other North American railroad.
The Pennsylvania Railroad, legal name The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, also known as the "Pennsy", was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia. It was named for the commonwealth in which it was established. At its peak in 1882, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest railroad, the largest transportation enterprise, and the largest corporation in the world.
Henry Morrison Flagler was an American industrialist and a founder of Standard Oil, which was first based in Ohio. He was also a key figure in the development of the Atlantic coast of Florida and founder of the Florida East Coast Railway. He is also known as a founder of the cities of Miami and Palm Beach, Florida.
Union Pacific Corporation is a publicly traded railroad holding company. It was incorporated in Utah in 1969 and is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. It is the parent company of the current, Delaware-registered, form of the Union Pacific Railroad, and the company, along with Berkshire Hathaway-owned rival BNSF, has a near-duopoly on freight railroad transportation west of the Mississippi River.
The South Improvement Company was a short-lived Pennsylvania corporation founded in late 1871 which existed until the state of Pennsylvania suspended its charter on April 2, 1872. It was created by major railroad and oil interests, and was widely seen as part of John D. Rockefeller's early efforts to organize and control the oil industry in the United States under Standard Oil. The company's purpose was to end a rate war with the rail trunk lines by dividing oil traffic more evenly between the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Erie Railroad, and the New York Central railroads. The second purpose of the company was to limit the production of refined oil - the country had a daily refining capacity of 40,000 barrels and a market for only 16,000. Although the company never shipped any oil, the South Improvement Company scheme caused widespread attention to be focused on the relationships between big railroads and big businesses that wanted and demanded favorable treatment. In what would become known as the Cleveland Massacre, John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler bought eighteen refineries, only one of which wasn't located in Cleveland over a month's time between mid-February and mid-March 1872.
The WCTU Railway LLC was a 13-mile (21 km) shortline railroad that connects White City, Oregon, United States to a junction north of Medford with the Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad, which hauls its cars to the Union Pacific Railroad at Eugene or Black Butte. The line began operations on November 20, 1954, on an abandoned Southern Pacific Transportation Company right-of-way as the White City Terminal & Utilities Co., and was renamed after the Union Tank Car Company bought it in 1974. WCTU Railway was owned by Marmon Transportation Services LLC, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway.
Transco was founded in October 1936, with its business mainly focused on servicing the railroad industry. In 1984, the company was restructured, with Transco Inc. now serving as the parent company for a number of subsidiary corporations, including Transco Railway Products Inc., Transco Products Inc., and Advance Thermal Corp. Transco Railway Products Inc. has its corporate offices in Chicago, Illinois and operates seven separate manufacturing facilities located strategically in major rail transportation corridors. In 2019 Transco was purchased by Marmon Rail, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.
The Drake Well Museum and Park is a museum in Cherrytree Township, Pennsylvania that chronicles the birth of the American oil industry in 1859 by Colonel Edwin Drake. The museum collects and preserves related artifacts. The reconstructed Drake Well demonstrates the first practical use of salt drilling techniques for the extraction of petroleum through an oil well.
John Wesley Van Dyke was president of the Atlantic Refining Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1911 until 1927. After the break-up of Standard Oil Trust, Van Dyke led the debt-ridden Atlantic Refining Company into expanded markets and sales of more than $131 million.
The Marmon-Herrington Company, Inc. is an American manufacturer of axles and transfer cases for trucks and other vehicles. Earlier, the company built military vehicles and some tanks during World War II, and until the late 1950s or early 1960s was a manufacturer of trucks and trolley buses. Marmon-Herrington had a partnership with Ford Motor Company, producing trucks and other commercial vehicles, such as buses. The company may be best known for its all-wheel-drive conversions to other truck maker's units, especially to Ford truck models. Founded in 1931, Marmon-Herrington was based in Indianapolis, Indiana, with a plant in Windsor, Ontario, and remained in Indianapolis until 1963. It is now based in Louisville, Kentucky.
GE Capital Rail Services, also known as GE Railcar, or GE Railcar Services Corporation was a business unit of GE Capital, a division of General Electric. It was a distinct business unit from General Electric's railway locomotive manufacturer.
Marmon Group is an American industrial holding company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois; founded by Jay Pritzker and Robert Pritzker in 1953, it has been held by the Berkshire Hathaway group since 2013. It owns companies that produce transportation equipment, electrical components and other industrial components, and companies that provide services in the construction and retail sectors. Tank car manufacturing is a significant part of its business, products which are sold through its subsidiaries Union Tank Car Company in the United States and Procor in Canada. Berkshire Hathaway, which owns the largest freight railroad carrier in North America, BNSF Railway, acquired controlling interest in Marmon in 2007 and became sole owner six years later.
The Rogue Valley Terminal Railroad is a 14-mile (23 km) shortline railroad that connects the industrial park in White City, Oregon, United States to the Central Oregon and Pacific Railroad, which hauls its cars to the Union Pacific Railroad at Eugene, Oregon or Black Butte, California via the Siskiyou Summit, or to the Yreka Western Railroad at Montague, California.
CCT Rail System Corporation is a US shortline railroad holding company that owns and operates the Rogue Valley Terminal Railroad Corporation.
The Empire Transportation Company was a multimodal freight transportation company founded and operated by Joseph D. Potts in 1865. It owned a small fleet of boats on the Great Lakes which collected grain and produce which were then delivered to Erie, Pennsylvania. It owned 5,000 railroad cars, 1,500 of which were tank cars devoted to carrying oil. It also owned 520 miles of oil pipelines. By the mid-1870s, it hauled about 3,000,000 barrels of oil annually, of which about two-thirds came from independent oil refiners. The company was a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad and it was very profitable. In 1876 the company paid a 10 percent dividend ($400,000) on stock worth $4,000,000.
The Pithole Valley Railway was an ephemeral short line railroad in Venango County, Pennsylvania, constructed as a result of the Pennsylvania oil rush. The railroad was originally constructed in 1865 between Oil City, Pennsylvania, a local oil transportation hub, and the boomtown of Pithole, Pennsylvania. Constructed under the charter of the Clarion Land and Improvement Company, it was informally known as the Oil City and Pithole Branch Railroad. Although it was generally supported by the broad gauge Atlantic and Great Western Railway, it was built to standard gauge. Conflict with the Warren and Franklin Railway over the right-of-way along the Allegheny River led to a lawsuit which, in 1866, declared that the Oil City and Pithole had no right to operate along the river from Oleopolis, Pennsylvania to Oil City. That part of the line was sold to the Warren and Franklin, leaving the Oil City and Pithole with a 7-mile (10 km) line running north from Oleopolis to Pithole along Pithole Creek.
Following the 1911 Supreme Court ruling that found Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly, the company was broken up into 34 different entities, divided primarily by region and activity. Many of these companies later became part of the Seven Sisters, which dominated global petroleum production in the 20th century, and became a majority of today's largest investor-owned oil companies, with most tracing their roots back to Standard Oil. Some descendants of Standard Oil were also given exclusive rights to the Standard Oil name.
