ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Ever-Ready Oil Co. Inc., Albuquerque, N.M., is closing 23 area Chevron-branded gas stations, the New Mexico Petroleum Marketers Association (NMPMA) told KOAT-TV. Employees said up to 300 jobs could be lost., the report added.
"They took down the Chevron signs a long time ago, a month and a half ago on all of them, so I imagine that they're all in the same boat," Ruben Baca, state executive for NMPMA, a member of the six-state Western Petroleum Marketers Association (WPMA), told the news outlet.
Employees told reporters who went inside one of [image-nocss] the stations that all they could say was that the company was going out of business. Employees said they were liquidating all of the merchandise, including the gasoline. Employees at the corporate office said the company is still selling fuel to other businesses in Albuquerque.
The company is not talking about exactly why they are shutting down the stations, said the report. Ever-Ready Oil owner Charles Ochs was not there when KOAT-TV stopped by the corporate office, said the report. He has not returned calls.
KOAT-TV spoke to a pair of vendors who did not want to be identified because they did not want to risk not getting paid. They said Ever-Ready Oil owes them as much as $40,000.
The company was started in 1929 as a small garage with two gasoline pumps, according to the Ever-Ready Oil website. By 1998, Ever-Ready Oil owned and operated 28 convenience stores under the RediMart name and had developed a large wholesale fuel, lubricant and commercial fueling center business. At that time, the Ever-Ready business was purchased by Charles Ochs, doing business as Petrolink Inc.
In 2001, Petrolink formally changed its name to Ever-Ready Oil Co. Inc. Today, Ever-Ready Oil owns and operates 28 Chevron and three Conoco stations. It also has a network of national and proprietary commercial fueling sites and a wholesale division that sells and distributes lubricants and approximately 40 million gallons of wholesale fuels yearly throughout the state of New Mexico. It has been the City of Albuquerque's supplier since 1993. It has also been a distributor of E85 and B20 biofuels since 2000, and have been the primary distributor in the state market of these alternative fuels. And it provides B5, B10 and B20 diesel to the City of Albuquerque, the University of New Mexico, various agencies of the stat, and various other local and federal governmental entities.
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