Chevron
and
Hess
are merging to create a $300 billion energy behemoth with operations on nearly every continent of Earth. But for many consumers, the most important part of the deal is literally child’s play.
Hess
still sells company-branded toy trucks, and they’re probably the only remaining oil and gas product that actually inspires sentimentality.
When Barron’s asked
Chevron
(ticker CVX) Chief Financial Officer Pierre Breber about the trucks on Monday morning, he made it clear that the executives were “focused on material items” like Hess’ (HES) enormous oil-drilling operation in waters off Guyana. But he also was sympathetic to the loyalty people have for the trucks. In fact, it was the first thing his daughter’s boyfriend asked him when he heard about the deal. And he was not about to be the bearer of bad news.
“Yes, the trucks we intend to keep,” he said.
The boyfriend is from New York, which is where Hess’ headquarters are located. The trucks were a hit for years in the Big Apple and in New Jersey, where Hess was founded.
Hess founder Leon Hess dreamed up the idea of selling toy trucks in 1964, about 30 years after he started the company and four years after he had opened the first Hess gasoline station. It was a product with personal meaning for him. When he was 19 years old in 1933, he had bought a used 615-gallon oil delivery truck and traveled around delivering fuel to New Jerseyans, a decision that launched his multibillion-dollar business.
The trucks were popular and Hess decided to offer them every year at Hess gas stations. At first, he sold replicas of the company’s gasoline delivery trucks, but he soon branched out, changing the design every year or two. There were boats and fire engines, and vehicles with special features like inner compartments and lights. They became collector’s items, and so sought-after that gas stations were instructed to sell no more than two to each customer.
Nowadays trucks can be found for sale on eBay for hundreds of dollars, and some vintage editions have sold for thousands. Hess guards its toy truck plans like state secrets and takes more time to develop some of them than the parent company takes to explore a new oil field.
“The highly secretive process of developing the annual toy generally starts between two and three years before it actually goes on sale,” says the website of the toy truck division. “And for some of the more complicated toys, it’s been as long as six years from concept to market.”
In 2014, Hess sold its 1,300 gas stations to
Marathon Petroleum
(MPC), which rebranded them as Speedway stations. Hess continued to sell the trucks online at hesstoytrucks.com. The company says it still sells more than 1 million a year. The latest edition features a police truck and cruiser, retailing for $42.99, plus tax. It doesn’t release revenue figures, but Hess appears to still make tens of millions of dollars worth of sales each year.
It might not be enough to change the math on a multibillion-dollar oil merger, but it’s not insignificant either.
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