Business Was Booming
The smell of exhaust and the searing heat of running engines tangled together until it felt impossible to breathe, and lukewarm, sticky oil ran down the backs of my hands.
The station forecourt was packed with trucks in an instant, so crowded there wasn’t even room to walk through.
Like the saying went, people who had eaten meat knew how to eat it well, and Grandpa Morgan looked as if he had no idea what to do with this unprecedented jackpot parade unfolding before his eyes.
My father, already used to scenes like this, rolled up his sleeves and took charge of the traffic.
“Hey! Red truck! Back up a little more! Silver truck, no cutting in line! I said line up!”
His gestures grew busier, and his voice kept getting louder.
I worked both pumps at once, shoving nozzles in and pulling them out without pause.
My palms grew hot, and the smell of oil soaked into the backs of my hands so strongly that it rose like a thick cloud.
There was no time to rest.
As soon as one truck was done, the next was waiting, and then another after that.
A bearded white driver handed me a cold can of cola.
Taking the can, I wiped the sweat from my face.
No one asked why the gas was so cheap.
They were all the kind of people who understood the situation, and all of them were desperate.
A Mexican driver filling up at the next pump bared white teeth beneath his mustache and laughed.
“Gracias, amigo! Thanks, friend! I’ve been working overtime just to cover my daughter’s braces this month, and you saved me fifty bucks here. I’m sleeping with both legs stretched out tonight!”
“This place is run by an angel!”
“I’m coming back tomorrow too! And the day after!”
The truckers chimed in one by one, honking their horns as they went.
Honk—! HOOONK—! Beep!
Horn blasts rang out in waves, and the old pumps’ motors overheated and whined like they were screaming for mercy, but even that noise sounded beautiful to me.
* * *
Inside the office, the old cash register rang without pause.
Cling—! Clank—! Ching—!
Oddly racist sounds, aren’t they?
Anyway, once the cash drawer was full, Grandpa Morgan brought out another box.
“Grandpa, that’s already the third box. Aren’t you tired?”
Grandpa Morgan shook his head, still clutching a stack of bills.
Tears had gathered at the corners of his eyes.
“No... I’m not tired. This acrid smell... the oil stains on the floor... that noisy engine sound...”
A faint smile spread across his wrinkled face.
“It’s been twenty years. It smells just like the day my father died.”
The old man stared at the black-and-white photograph hanging on the wall.
A young Black man standing beside a horse-drawn wagon in 1928.
His weathered hand brushed the frame.
“Father, are you watching? I didn’t sell the store. I didn’t hand it over to those white bastards. We won.”
Just then, my father burst through the door, drenched in sweat.
“Sir! The underground tank is almost empty! Would it be all right if we connect a hose straight from our truck tank?”
The question also meant: would you take our oil?
Grandpa Morgan wiped his tears away with his sleeve.
Life seemed to rush back into the folds of his face.
“As much as you want, Master Lee! If I’m short on oil, I’d sell my own blood if I had to! Bring the hose! I’ll connect it myself!”
The order of the steps had shifted a little, but that was the moment Grandpa Morgan officially declared his intention to join the franchise.
I watched the old man trot out with a light step, and the sight of those hunched shoulders now straightened made me feel absurdly good.
* * *
By the time the sun began to sink low, Morgan Oil was blazing with truck headlights, but Texaco across the road was silent as a grave.
I stepped out to the roadside and looked toward Texaco.
A spotless station with a modern car wash and convenience store.
A manager in uniform was slamming his hat onto the ground in front of an empty pump, while an employee beside him looked utterly helpless.
Latest equipment? A points card?
None of it mattered.
For truckers, the absolute standard was gas that was even one cent cheaper.
My father came up beside me and handed me a can of coffee.
“Sanha. This is really going to work. It’s going to work for real.”
“Right? There must be plenty of people like Grandpa Morgan all over Texas.”
“Those bastards are probably blowing up the phone back at headquarters reporting this. But what are they going to do? Our distribution network doesn’t even have a physical body.”
Not only did it have no physical body, it wasn’t illegal either.
Small gas stations were free to buy fuel from wherever they wanted, and they had no obligation to explain it to anyone or make a public spectacle of it.
No matter what the big refiners did, no matter what the IRS did, they weren’t going to beat a gas station and a bunch of truckers who settled everything in cash.
Especially in a recession like this, in a world so tangled and frantic that dozens or even hundreds of companies were going under every day.
* * *
Night deepened, but the line of trucks still didn’t thin.
I spread the Texas map out on the hood of my father’s truck.
“Dad, I think I need to go back to school now. I’ve got something to take care of after Thanksgiving.”
“Sure. A student should study. Your uncle and I can handle things here. But what’s with the map?”
I picked up a red pen and started circling the major cities on the map.
Waco.
A transportation hub in central Texas, between Dallas and Austin.
Running through it was I-35, meaning any truck traveling north or south had to pass through that city.
For now it was empty because of the recession, but it would be one of the first places to recover when the economy picked up.
Austin.
The state capital of Texas, and a college city where the University of Texas was located.
With its large young population and strong buying power, it was known among truckers as a city where the orders never stopped flowing.
Besides, I had also heard rumors that IT companies had started setting up shop there one by one.
San Antonio.
A gateway city in southern Texas, only two hours from the Mexican border.
Agricultural goods coming up from Mexico, manufactured goods heading down from the United States—all of it passed through there.
By logistics volume alone, it was the second-largest hub in Texas after Houston.
All three cities were either in the vicinity of Garden Queens, our base, or important junctions connected by major highways.
And the places I marked on the map were the small and mid-sized gas stations in those hubs—every single one of them bankrupt and up for auction.
“These are the places I’ve been looking into buying. Gas stations that went bankrupt and were put up for auction without an owner.”
“......!”
I took several folded sheets from my pocket and spread them over the map.
Numbers and notes filled every inch.
“First, the one near Waco. It’s called Sunset Oil, right off the I-35 exit. It used to be a Gulf franchise. Six pumps, two light-maintenance bays, and even a convenience store building—a solid B-grade facility.”
“Hm? If it’s B-grade, isn’t that pretty good? Wouldn’t it be expensive?”
“Its appraised value was originally $180,000. But the owner ran off in the middle of the night while being chased by gambling debts. It’s already been passed over at auction for eight months, so the starting bid has dropped to $22,000.”
“What? Twenty-two thousand? That’s basically free!”
“Grandpa Morgan’s station was almost sold for a mere $8,000, remember? This Lone Star Fuel north of Austin is in even more urgent shape. It’s a Chevron-branded C-grade facility, with four pumps and a car wash. The owner couple is in the middle of a divorce lawsuit, so it’s been dumped on the market for a quick sale because of asset division. An appraisal that came in at $120,000 is now listed at $18,000.”
“Good grief... I guess the recession really is a recession.”
My father’s eyes widened further and further.
I kept going.
“Border Stop, on the outskirts of San Antonio, is the biggest of the lot. It’s a large-truck-only station with twelve pumps, truck rest areas, and showers—an A-grade site. It used to be directly operated by Texaco, but the headquarters dumped it during restructuring.”
“They threw away an A-grade property? Why? The facilities are good, and the location’s good too.”
“Texaco pulled out of its Mexico-side business, so they liquidated all their border-area hubs. The current auction price is $97,000. That’s basically free too. It was originally appraised at $450,000.”
Flipping through page after page, I continued.
“Besides those, there are about twelve smaller D-grade listings. They’re tiny stations with only two pumps, and those are going for anywhere between $5,000 and $8,000. The facilities are old, but the land sits right beside the highway, so the lot value alone will be worth it. We need to scoop all of them up.”
“......My God. When did you research all this? Are you even studying?”
“It was a class assignment, so I worked on it at the same time. You’ll see when you look at my report card later—I’ve been studying hard too.”
To reassure my father, I had to add just a little lie.
In reality, my grades were perfectly fine—more than fine, actually—so there wasn’t much to worry about.
My father flipped through my report and clicked his tongue.
“You’re incredibly thorough. This must have taken a lot of time. I should be the one doing this...”
“It didn’t take that long. Court auction notices and bank foreclosure lists are public records, so I could check them at the library. I asked Uncle to do the field inspections secretly whenever he went out making fuel deliveries.”
On the very last page, I’d included a table I’d calculated myself.
Seventeen properties in total.
Estimated winning bids: about $230,000.
Facilities restoration and inventory restocking: about $80,000.
Total investment would come to $310,000, and that much could be covered easily with the cash my parents already had on hand, without me putting in any separate money at all.
“We buy the land and facilities cheap, hire trustworthy people to run them, and that’s it. There’s no need for us to be out there running around ourselves—just appoint managers in each area. Unemployment is sky-high these days, so finding experienced people should be easy.”
My father looked over the dozens of red dots I’d marked on the map and let out a low whistle.
“Ha-ha-ha—so you’ve decided to swallow all of Texas whole, huh?”
“If we only hire people we can trust, it’s entirely doable. Why don’t you and Uncle try using your connections?”
“Don’t worry. Your uncle and I will go out ourselves and pound the pavement. And maybe we should ask your mother to help interview them. Your mother has an eye for people, that’s for sure.”
Before I went back to school, the final task that remained was the interviews and the hiring.