Bradford, Vt.
Now add to that propane fuel distribution and a gas station.
Stacey Thomson, owner of Thomson Timber Harvesting & Trucking in Orford, has launched Thomson Fuels LLC and this week will be reopening the gas pumps at the former Perry Oil Service location on Main Street in Bradford.
Downtown Bradford has been without its own gas station for nearly three years since it was closed after Perry’s sold to Osterman Propane in 2015. Thomson bought the prime Main Street real estate parcel at auction for $139,000 last summer, keeping mum on his plans for the property.
But Thomson, who was at the Northeast Propane Show in Worcester, Mass., last week to meet with vendors who supply everything from billing systems to equipment and insurance, said Bradford has been in sore need of a return of its downtown filling station.
At the same time that “there is a real hole in the market for a local propane fuel guy because everyone else is corporate owned,” he said.
In an unusual move, Thomson Fuels will be selling gas under its own name. Thomson said he’d rather sell unbranded gas than to deal with all the requirements the major oil companies impose on station operators.
“It’s much easier to do if you’re not controlled” by the gas supplier, he explained.
Although the operating margins on retail gas stations are very small, he sees the station as a way to build goodwill and a presence in the town by virtue of addressing a common complaint among town residents.
“Bradford really needs that gas station reopened. Sometimes the wait in line is 15 minutes at the other locations outside of town.”
By opening a propane distribution business — Thomson has already acquired two propane trucks — Thomson hopes to fill the local owned-and-operated vacuum in propane distribution created when Perry’s sold to Massachusetts-based Osterman Propane in September, 2015. A few weeks later, Osterman also bought Patten’s Gas in North Haverhill.
Then last month the retail propane operations of Osterman’s parent company, NGL Energy Partners of Tulsa, Okla., were acquired by Canadian propane giant Superior Plus Corp. for $900 million.
Thomson said his propane company’s service area will be the towns of Bradford, Fairlee, Orford, Piermont, Haverhill, Newbury and “anything within a 30 mile radius.”
The propane office will be based at the gas station and will be staffed (the gas pumps will be self-serve) during business hours. A walk-in office is part of the idea, he said.
“They key to this business up and down the valley is if the customer wants to talk to the owner, they can,” Thomson said. “That’s me.”
John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com.
