I have over 500 original Bennett blueprints showing how pumps should be painted. Every time Bennett got an order from a pump company for a certain amount of pumps and how they wanted them painted and decaled, Bennett would print a blue print (actually more of a onion paper sheet}. It would indicate what colors and where these colors were to be. They also show where how many inches above this or below this the decals were to be, including where the :Contains Lead" signs were to be. Most of these date from 1925 and 1950.
These orders came from different parts of the country, meaning different divisions of the oil companies. Let's just use ABC Oil Company, I have specifications from division X of ABC and then different specifications from division Y of the same oil company. Most were not the same. I keep trying to emphases this, not every pump from a particular company was painted/decaled the same throughout the country. How about Mon & Pop that owned their own company, they owned everything, the ground, the building, the pumps, the sign pole, everything. Different local distributors of oil products wanted them to purchase the gasoline and other products from them to sell to their customers. Some offered a sign and the products, some offered painting their pumps, decals for their pumps, advertising signs, you name it. So Mon & Pop chose the ABC company, they sent out a couple of guys who would erect an overhead sign the customers could see about a 1/2 mile away, they would also bring some decals to be placed on the pumps. If the pumps were red (Mon & Pop had purchased a couple of used pumps from a company in the next largest city where there was a small company that refurbished old used pumps and sold them to people who could not afford a new pump), these green decals would be placed over the old original red color.
Back in 1956 I was in the Army at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. I fell in love with a young lady whose family lived about 10 miles out the back gate of the Fort. You drive down a paved road, then turned off on a dirt road to reach the house her parents lived. This road ended at a "T." At this T was a country store. I don't remember what brand of gasoline they sold, I do remember driving up in my 1953 Ford to a visible pump. The owner came out and pumped the number of gallons I wanted.
This was a Mon & Pop location, groceries inside, gas outside. Not another station for at least ten miles, who cared what brand of gasoline was coming from that glass cylinder, it looked like gasoline so it must be gasoline. In 1951 telephones had just been installed for the first time, electric had been installed in the late 1930s under the Rural Electric program of the U.S. Government. I doubt this pump had a electric motor, so I assume it was pumped by hand. This is what Mon & Pop stations were like even in the 1950s, and there were 1000s of them, so before you see pictures of gas stations from the city of Chicago and the pumps all alike, remember there were only100s of pumps there, out in the heartland of America there were 1000s of gas pumps painted/decaled just about any color you could imagine.
Paint it any way you like, if you are Scottish as I am, paint it to match your clan. or kilt.
Jack Sim
Last edited by Jack Sim; Sun Dec 09 2018 09:29 PM.
