Phillips 66

Phillips 66 is a brand of gasoline and service station in the U.S. Today it belongs to the ConocoPhillips Company.

The company that made Phillips 66 gasoline began in 1917 as Phillips Petroleum Company. In 1927, the company's gasoline was being tested on U.S. Highway 66 in Oklahoma, and when it turned out that the car was going 66 mph, the company decided to name the new fuel Phillips 66. [cite book |last= Aaseng |first= Nathan |year= 2000 |title= Business Builders in Oil |publisher= The Oliver Press, Inc |id= ISBN 1881508560 P. 104.]

The first Phillips 66 gas station opened November 19, 1927 in Wichita, Kansas [http://members.cox.net/wichitahpa/phillips66.html] . The first station to be built in Texas was built in 1929 [http://www.cart66pf.org/66caravan/roadlog24.htm] at McLean [http://www.barbwiremuseum.com/TexasRoute66.htm] . Both of these stations have been preserved by local historical societies.

The Phillips 66 shield logo, created for its link to the highway of the same number, was introduced in 1930 in a black and orange color scheme that would last nearly 30 years. In 1959, Phillips introduced a revised version of the shield in the colors, red, white and black that is still in use to this day.

From the late 1930s until the 1960s, Phillips employed groups of young women qualified as registered nurses as "Highway Hostesses" who made periodic and random visits to Phillips 66 stations within their regions to inspect station restroom facilities to ensure they were well cleaned and stocked. The Highway Hostesses also served as ambassadors for the company by directing motorists to suitable dining and lodging facilities.

Phillips was among the first oil companies to introduce a multi-grade motor oil, Trop Artic, in 1954. Such motor oils were designed to be used year-round in automobile engines as opposed to single grades for which different grades of motor oils were recommended to meet various weather variances.

Phillips Petroleum Company also had regional gasoline stations in Canada's western provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia) called Pacific 66 until the late 1970s. During the 1950s and 1960s, Phillips expanded its gasoline marketing nationwide and entered the West Coast market in 1966 when it purchased Tidewater Oil Company's Flying A stations in several states along with a refinery. In 1967, Phillips became the nation's second oil company to sell and market gasoline in all 50 states with the opening of a Phillips 66 station in Anchorage, Alaska. However, Phillips 66's era in 50-state marketing was short-lived due to a number of factors and the company withdrew from gasoline marketing in the northeastern U.S. in 1972 and sold off the former Tidewater/Flying A properties in California and other West Coast states in 1976. Phillips 66 stations have also been well represented at toll road concession areas in several states, most notably Oklahoma and Kansas.

The advertising slogan from the mid-1970s until the ConocoPhillips merger was "The Performance Company" depicting not only the performance of its gasoline and other petroleums but innovations with asphaltic materials, fertilizers and other non-automotive products. Other slogans through the years have included "At Phillips 66 It's Performance That Counts" and "The Gasoline That Won the West".

Phillips Petroleum has now merged with Conoco to form ConocoPhillips, a well-known company.

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