About Us
In 1877, Charles E. Mills founded the C.E. Mills Oil Company. Henry E. Mills, the son of Charles, continued the C. E. Mills Oil Company.
Earle “Ducky” Drake joined the C. E. Mills Oil Company in 1924 after his marriage to the granddaughter of Henry E. Mills, Marian. Later in Ducky’s association with the C. E. Mills Oil Company, a new company was formed, Drake and Mills Oil Company. This new company was to become one of the largest heating-oil and oil-equipment companies in Central New York.
After several subsequent corporate formations, mergers and acquisitions, including Putnam Drake Corporation, Nicoletti Fuel Oil Company, Minoa Fuel Oil Company, Oil & Heating Services Corporation, Earle “Ducky” Drake formed Ducky Drake, Incorporated in 1957.
Some time later in 1957, he divested himself of his fuel oil interests and became a distributor of Kendall Motor Oil Products in Onondaga, Oswego and Cayuga counties.
In 1972, Ducky turned his firm over to his son Henry Mills Drake who renamed the company Drake Oil Company, Incorporated. This marked the fourth generation of the Mills and Drake families as owners of the business.
Henry Drake passed away in his early fifties in 1990. His wife Joanne and son Tom ran the company until 1991, at which point they sold the company to Daniel A. Tropea.
Dan decided to maintain the Drake name for the company because of its long history and many successful years of operation. In 1992, Dan acquired McDougal Oil of Newark, NY, which expanded the reach of the Drake Oil Company to include Wayne, Ontario and Yates counties, and the product mix to include ARCO Oil products then Petro Canada and GULF.
In 1998, the Drake Oil Company acquired Wainwright Oil Company of Dryden, NY, which further expanded the territory to include Cortland, Tompkins, Broome, Chenango, Otsego and Delaware counties plus several north central Pennsylvania counties.
Soon after Kendall Motor Oil asked the Drake Oil Company to be their exclusive agent for Jefferson, Lewis, Madison and Herkimer counties. In 2001, the Drake Oil Company teamed with the Valvoline Corporation to carry the Valvoline line and service all of the area Valvoline accounts.
In 1995, the office and warehouse facilities moved from Solar Street in the Carousel Mall area, formerly Oil City, to its current location at 6620 Joy Road in East Syracuse.
