About Us: History
CarterEnergy Through the Years
For almost 50 years, CarterEnergy has had a history of being an innovative leader and trend-setter in the petroleum marketing business. To this day, CarterEnergy continues our role as an industry leader by partnering with suppliers, legislators, customers and even competitors to challenge the status quo and develop competitive and effective solutions for marketing and consuming petroleum products.
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1959
Sam Carter, founder of CarterEnergy, got a job at the local Mobil station in his hometown of Liberty, Missouri, while attending college at William Jewel. Within six months, Sam became the lessee/operator of the store.
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1960
Sam Carter left the Mobil station and became the lessee of a new Phillips 66 store in Liberty. Sam incorporated the business to become Sam Carter Oil. At that time, Phillips had a rule that an operator could only run one store. Due to superior performance, they changed their rule and Sam became the first Phillips 66 retailer to run multiple sites. During this time, most fueling stations were full service.
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1965
There were no Phillips 66 jobberships available so Sam entered into the jobber business by buying the local Skelly station from Ralph Conely.
- 1971
Sam and Ralph entered into a 10-year buyout agreement for Ralph's retail stations and jobbership and Sam began to diversify even more. He now owned several retail sites, two bulk plants, a TBA (tires, batteries, automotive accessories) warehouse, as well as a fleet of tankwagons and tow trucks. He also entered the wholesale market, supplying fuel to other retail outlets.
- 1982
Sam bought his first transport truck, enabling him to better serve his wholesale customers as well as provide services to his own retail stores. Getty bought out Skelly, making Sam a Getty jobber.
- 1983
In order to support and grow his blossoming business, Sam hired Bryan Beaver as the company's first marketing representative. The trend towards convenience stores was just beginning. Sam began to acquire and convert service stations into the proprietary brand of "ASAP" convenience stores. ASAP remained the brand name of Sam's retail division until October 1999, at which time the ASAP stores were liquidated.
- 1983
Carter became a multi-branded jobber, gaining distributor contracts with Phillips 66, Conoco, Total/Apco and Citgo Petroleum.
- 1984
Carter Transport was established as a separate business entity.
The business structure now broke down into three businesses:
- Sam Carter Oil, Inc. (ASAP retail stores)
- Carter Petroleum Products, Inc. (Wholesale and commercial division, lube oils, TBA)
- Carter Transport Co. (Common carrier)
- Late 1980's
Carter Petroleum began acquiring other petroleum distributors and expanding geographically into southwest Missouri and Kansas. As Carter expanded and began to focus more on retail and wholesale business, we discontinued the lube oil and TBA business. During these years, we began building more modern, ground-up convenience stores.
- 1990
Carter moved from Liberty to Riverside, MO where we were able to accommodate our headquarters alongside our bulk plant and unattended fueling facility. Sam Carter and Bryan Beaver entered into a 10-year buy-out arrangement.
- Mid 1990's
We expanded our geography to include Illinois and Iowa. Towards the late 90's, we moved into Oklahoma, and in February 2000, we expanded into Texas. From 1988 to 1999, Carter Petroleum quadrupled its business.
- 1997
Bryan Beaver became President of Carter Petroleum Products.
- 2000
Sam and Bryan completed their buy-out agreement. On January 1, 2000, Bryan Beaver became CEO and President of Carter Petroleum. Sam Carter retired and still resides part-time in Kansas City.
- 2003
In order to better reflect Carter's future path and direction, Carter Petroleum Products completed a makeover and became CarterEnergy Corporation.
Sam Carter ca.1960