MIDLAND, Texas — Keeping good people is a challenge across the industry these days. Bill Kent, chairman and CEO of Kent Oil, shares a story of an employee earning a $90,000 salary who left recently for a job with an oilfield service company.
The competing salary? $155,000.
“You can’t compete,” Kent says.
While the acquisitions the company made in 2021 were mostly instances where an opportunity just came up, Kent says, expanding its reach to areas outside of the West Texas oil fields was part of the strategy.
“We want to have some diversity of geography that would give us a little more routine business and stability,” Kent says.
When times are good, the oilfield and service companies will offer generous pay to employees to get them to come work for them—but when times are bad, they may lay off those employees, Kent says.
“It’s just a really challenging area to operate in,” he says.
But Kent Oil and the Kent family (Bill bought the company from his father in 1984.) have managed to stay in business in the area for more than 60 years. Kent attributes that success to his leadership team: “I’m blessed to have a lot of really good people,” he says.
Kent Oil acquired 11 stores from Bountyland Petroleum and Bountyland Food Service, Seneca, S.C., in October 2021.
It also built a handful of new-to-industry stores and made other smaller acquisitions, bringing its store count up from 53 at the end of 2021 to 71 a year later, placing it at No. 98 in the Top 202. Its stores are branded Kent Kwik, although Bountyland stores will keep their name, Kent says.
Kent Oil, part of The Kent Cos., Midland, Texas, also grows through new builds, averaging five a year. A new store is typically about 4,500 square feet, and travel stops are closer to 9,000 square feet.
The company won’t shy away from future acquisitions if they make economic sense, Kent says. It’s considered acquisitions of less than 10 stores or up to 70 stores over the years, Kent says.
“We’re not limited in what we’re looking at,” Kent says.