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Longtime Family Business Wilcox and Flegel Oil Looks to Future
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The Wilcox family has been delivering fuel to Washington and Oregon for more than 50 years. Now, the family business is giving local residents another option to standard petroleum.
Wilcox and Flegel Oil opened the state’s first all-biodiesel station at 416 Oregon Way in Longview. The station offers three grades of ethanol, including E85, which is 85 percent ethanol. Four other Wilcox and Flegel stations in the region are also offering ethanol options at the pump.
“It’s renewable and produced in the United States, so it seems to support our economy more than imported oil,” says Steve Wilcox, the second-generation president of Wilcox and Flegel.
The introduction of ethanol options to the area, Wilcox hopes, will spark increased demand for the product.
“As more stations are available, more flex-fuel vehicles will be purchased,” he says.
The family business has changed considerably since his father, Steve Wilcox Jr., and Art Flegel were providing area residents with heating fuel in the early 1950s. Today, the company employs more than 300 people at locations throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Story by Dan Markham
