Rod: you have asked a fair question. Here are my inital thoughts:

I certainly don’t know what Conoco’s policy was in the 1930’s. However, when I worked at Conoco our policy was that we wanted a mix of dealer and company-owned stations. We didn’t mind having a majority dealer-owned stations but we wanted a certain number of company-owned stations so that we could know how profitable they were - and thus how profitable the dealers were too. This allowed us to offer the dealer a fair and competitive arrangement, knowing how much profit he could expect. Without owning any of our own stations, we could not manage this aspect properly.

Just for grins, let’s examine the sitatuion assuming 100% dealer owned stations, giving the dealer the flexibility to buy from any pump manufacturer that he chooses. In that situation, why would Conoco buy an ownership in M&S - if Conoco could not dictate that dealers purchase M&S pumps (and thus help Conoco profit from ownership of the pump company)? That would make no sense. Furthermore, what are the odds that not a single dealer would choose the M&S 70 gas pump? Given the hundreds of Conoco branded stations, you might expect some of the dealers to choose the M&S 70 pump. But none apparently did. Again, something doesn’t make sense in this scenario.

In the likely scenario that Conoco owned and operated some - but not all - of its stations, the original question remains. If Conoco owned Martin & Schwartz and owned some (or all) of their own gas stations, why didn’t they use the M&S 70 for an entire decade?

In 1946 when the M&S 80 was introduced Conoco used that new gas pump very extensively. The overwhelming majority of photos of Conoco stations from that era show the M&S 80. This tells me two things: 1) that Conoco could - and did - dictate the purchase of the M&S 80, whether to dealers or to its own operations, and 2) that the ownership of M&S likely drove their preference for that pump.

Sorry for the long post. Your question is a good one, but every possibility with the dealers leads me to a dead end, or back to the original question.

Andy