Above photo is from the Lynch Harper collection, when this frame was shot, the rent for operators leasing full-service locations from Jackson oil was based on sales – the fortunes of both turned on the same dime. Groomed as the family’s third-generation owner-operator, before he was allowed to come home Chuck Burge found the same business prin­ciple successfully at work in the larger business world.

You can come home, but it takes a while

Chuck Burge’s dream has come true. He’s a third-generation truck driver and he and his wife, Teri, are the third generation Mom & Pop command of an oil distributorship that began when Billy and Etoil Jackson gambled their savings on a Highway 67 Truck Stop.

“When you’re 13 years old, nothing’s better than going on the truck with your granddad to Texarkana, knowing he’s gonna pull over and let you drive as soon as you hit the interstate,” Chuck said.

“Don’t tell your grandmother,” Billy Jackson made him promise, every time another trip brought another day of driver education. Whatever else Chuck Burge learned, the instruction he got every time he moved in at the wheel was the same: “Don’t ever lose respect for what you’re hauling.”

Every driver hears the same admonition. Repeatedly.

“When you’re hauling fuel, if you’re involved in an accident there’s a good chance you’ll never get a second chance,” Chuck said.

Jackson Oil, the last fuel distributor in a town where Billy and Etoil once competed against three others, began just after World War II.

“She saved all the money she could squeeze out of his military pay while he was in the Navy,” Chuck said. When he came home they opened a truck stop on U.S. 67, “the old Dallas Highway.” He pumped fuel, fixed flats, bought a bob-tail truck with a 500 gallon tank and opened a sideline enterprise delivering fuel to one-pump country stores.

Billy and Etoil began buying and building stations they leased out to operators.

There wasn’t a fixed monthly rent. When operators did well, the distributorship did well. If business was off, Jackson Oil bit the bullet with its tenants.

“What they pumped determined what they paid,” Chuck said. “Rent was a penny a gallon.”

The Jacksons had one daughter, Patricia, Chuck’s mom.

“For high school graduation, her parents gave her a Fina Station,” he said.

At the height of the full-service station days, “There may have been as many as seventeen locations,” Chuck said. Self-service stations soared when the price of fuel tripled in 1974. By the 1980’s, one of Jackson Oil’s premiere locations – the four-pump, full-service Fina on North Jefferson – had become home to Newman Electronics.

By then, Chuck Burge had been sent away to New Mexico Military Institute.

“My orders were not to come home until I had a college degree,” he said. If he wanted to drive a truck, that was fine. But he would be an educated driver.

And there was a family military tradition. Chuck’s dad, who went by the more formal Charles Burge Sr., was a native of Alvin who served four years in the Air Force before graduating with a Bachelor’s of Business Administration from Sam Houston.

Commissioned as a second lieutenant, after graduating from New Mexico, Chuck Burge completed his assignment taking his Bachelors of Business Administration from Sam Houston. He served his remaining four military years in the Army Reserve.

Armed with a new diploma, he was ready to come home to Mt. Pleasant and slip behind the wheel at Jackson Oil.

After marrying Patricia and coming aboard at $126 a week in 1963, Charles and Patricia bought into the business when it was incorporated in 1968. In 1981, they bought the rest of the stock. With the same education credentials, Chuck expected to continue following his father’s path.

Not so fast, the family said, and he was given new orders.

“It was determined that I needed to get work on my own – the rationale was something about seeing if coming home was really what I wanted,” said Chuck, who for the next two years worked for UNOCAL, the now defunct Union Oil of California fuel distributors. It was an operation not unlike Jackson Oil during the full-service days, just bigger.

And in California instead of home in East Texas.

His best day there came when he was assigned as the lead to re-brand and re-purpose the company’s full-service locations as self-service fuel stops expanded into convenience stores. His worst day there was discovering that his plans amounted to little more than lip service, as if management didn’t believe what they’d told him to do would work.

“Maybe it was the Texas accent,” Chuck said.

Being iron willed about his son’s career path didn’t mean Charles Burge couldn’t hear. Stuck on high center in California, when Chuck called home venting frustration, Charles Burge used his stroke. He was a friend of Truman Arnold, the Texarkana entrepreneur building a base of Roadrunner convenience stores anchored by self-service pumps.

“Dad got me the interview,” Chuck said. He hired in as general manager of a premier location in Rockwall, the first stop coming east after crossing Ray Hubbard.

“That was a shock,” he said, calling back being 25 and discovering all Truman Arnold needed to hear was his family name, a privilege cutting two ways. There were expectations. Charles Burge didn’t put his son on, but he trusted him to live up to the family name.

“I got it,” Chuck said, stepping into a big picture.

Truman Arnold was building Road Runner the same way Billy Jackson developed his locations back in the penny-rent day.

“He owned both the stores and he owned the fuel terminal,” Chuck said. “It was all about volume, pushing fuel sales and that was all about beating the competition on price. You lived or died depending on keeping your overhead down.”

He was 26 when he was recognized for “Best Expense Control” in Road Runner’s 3-state fleet of locations. At corporate, they called his place “The Hummer,” for moving an average of more than 8,500 gallons of fuel daily.

A year and a half later, the call he’d longed for came, just not the way he wanted.

“You ready to come home?” asked Charles Burge, who was scheduled for open heart surgery before that was trendy.

Chuck drove a truck for the next six years. In 1999, when Charles died, Chuck cut back to half a day driving, half a day in the office. His wife, Teri, moved into the office across the hall.

In 2006, Chuck and Teri Burge bought the business.

His brother, Dr. Bill Burge, is a family practitioner in San Antonio.