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Official Site: Speedway.com
Wikipedia: Speedway LLC Page Sections History Article Index |
History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Speedway LLC page on 16 August 2020, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Speedway LLC is an American convenience store and gas station chain headquartered in Enon, Ohio, with locations primarily in the Midwest and the East Coast regions of the United States. Speedway stations are located in 32 states, up significantly from its core seven-state region in the Midwest since 2012. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Marathon Petroleum Corporation and is the largest convenience store chain in central Ohio.
On August 2, 2020, Marathon announced that Seven & i Holdings would be acquiring Speedway for $21 billion. The deal is anticipated to close in early 2021 pending regulatory approval.
Speedway started as Speedway 79, the name of a gasoline chain based in Michigan for much of the first half of the 20th century. In 1959, Marathon, then known as the Ohio Oil Company, purchased the chain and in 1962 converted its outlets to the Marathon brand.
As self-service gasoline became legalized in many states, Marathon decided to use "Speedway" (without the "79") at higher-volume self-service stations with convenience stores. The concept turned out to be one of the few bright spots for Marathon during this time, and the company quickly expanded this concept across Marathon's main territories across the Midwest and Southeastern United States. Part of this expansion was through the acquisition of various other smaller regional gasoline station chains, including GasAmerica, Starvin' Marvin, Gastown, Wake Up, Bonded, United, Cheker, Port, Ecol, and Value. These stations were converted to the Speedway branding. Stations acquired in the Cheker deal included former Enco stations that Cheker acquired after they were sold off by Exxon in 1977.
In 1997, Marathon and Ashland Petroleum formed Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC (MAP), a joint venture which combined the companies' refining, marketing, and transportation businesses, with Marathon owning 62% of the operations while Ashland owned 38%. In the process, Ashland's SuperAmerica and Marathon's Speedway convenience store chains were merged to form Speedway SuperAmerica LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of MAP. At this time, Marathon acquired the rights to the Solo, Save Mart, Save More, and Rich brands from Ashland, along with others. Many of these brands would be converted to the Speedway brand over time. When the merger was completed in 1998, the Speedway and SuperAmerica brands began to market together.
In 2005, Marathon purchased Ashland's share of Marathon Ashland Petroleum, which became Marathon Petroleum Company LLC, retaining the SuperAmerica and Rich brands that were originally owned by Ashland. At this time the locations outside the Upper Midwest were converted to "Speedway" and the "SuperAmerica" brand was restricted to the Upper Midwest market. Marathon sold SuperAmerica to Northern Tier Energy, a newly formed company backed by the private equity firms ACON Investments and TPG Capital, in February 2011. It is based in Woodbury, Minnesota. Speedway and SuperAmerica became unrelated chains until 7 years later, when Marathon bought Andeavor, who owns SuperAmerica's parent company Western Refining. Following the separation of Marathon's upstream and downstream operations in 2011, Speedway remained a part of Marathon's downstream operations.
In 2001, Speedway's truck stop chain was merged into the Pilot Travel Centers brand after Marathon and Pilot Corporation entered into a partnership to form Pilot Travel Centers. Pilot has since bought out Marathon's interest in Pilot Travel Centers, now Pilot Flying J. Following its merger with Hess Corporation's retail chain in 2014, six WilcoHess locations in Virginia were rebranded as Pilot locations and jointly operated between Pilot Flying J and Speedway. On June 23, 2016, Pilot Flying J and Speedway announced a new joint venture between the two companies that will see 41 Speedway locations (all former Wilco Hess locations) and 79 Pilot Flying J locations primarily in the Southeastern United States form PFJ Southeast LLC. The locations will be operated by Pilot Flying J and the Speedway locations will be rebranded as either Pilot or Flying J.
As of December 2, 2016, 12% of Speedway stores carry E85 Ethanol. Speedway currently has 326 stores with E85 available, and one store which carries CNG. Almost all of its stores in the Pittsburgh Metro as well as its stores in the state of Tennessee offer E85, greatly expanding the availability of the fuel in these respective markets.
| Date | Article | Author/Source |
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| 21 February 2018 | Speedway Raises $10.3 Million for Kids Treated at Local Children's Miracle Network Hospitals | Children's Miracle Network Hospitals |