In September of 1956, Mr. Charles Abercrombie, better known in Danville, Virginia, as "Mr. Charlie", opened a Phillips 66 gasoline distributorship serving four local stations. He named his new company, Abercrombie Oil Company, Incorporated and set up his office in a gasoline station on Bridge Street across from the main fire station.
The company began marketing home heating fuels in 1958 from their new location on River Street under the shadow of the historical Worsham Street Bridge.
For the next eleven years the company grew slowly but steadily until the local Cities Service distributorship, located on W. Main Street, was purchased. This began a pattern of growth through mergers and acquisitions that has continued for many years. Mergers with Burch Oil in Martinsville, Rich Petroleum and Willis Oil, both in Danville, greatly expanded the size and scope of the company. Abercrombie Oil Company was now considered a major player in the growing fuel oil and propane markets.
By the end of the '80s, Abercrombie Oil Company had become a distributor of Exxon and Citgo petroleum products and was moving into the convenience store market. But Milo Abercrombie, nephew of "Mister Charlie", after becoming president of the corporation, was always looking for additional opportunities. So, in the mid-nineties, he was successful in acquiring most of the assets of U-Fill-'Er-Up, Inc. whose headquarters were in Greensboro, N.C. This venture virtually doubled the size of Abercrombie Oil and dramatically increased the company's business in North Carolina.
Currently, Abercrombie Oil and its subsidiaries generate sales in excess of fifty million gallons of various petroleum products per year through its affiliations with Exxon-Mobil, Citgo, B.P. and Pennzoil. The Company serves more than 6,000 residential and commercial customers from its five plants in south central Virginia and the piedmont area of North Carolina.
Under the guidance of Milo Abercrombie, the company has grown from a small four-station distributorship into a diversified company employing more than 50 full- and part-time employees.
