Shell Station Closed For Now
By Stacey Creasy
Pilot News
BREMEN � Service stations are an endangered species.
The gas stations that also worked on the family car or truck when it needed repair have quickly disappeared from the landscape.
Today there are more gas station/convenience store or gas station/fast food business combinations than gas stations that house a one- or two-stall garage.
The Bremen Shell station is one of the latest casualties. The Shell was purchased by a national chain two months ago. It officially closed Saturday. The station was the last gas/service business in the downtown Bremen area.
�The garage has actually been closed for a couple of years,� said Bremen Director of Operations Duwaine Elliott. �At least the garage in the sense that we think of has not been open for that long.� Tony Leeper, who used to run his own service station, had used the one-bay garage attached to the station and had been repairing cars there for months.
The Shell station had been a fixture in the downtown area for decades.
The gas station/store was purchased by a company called National Oil, according to Elliott. National Oil bought the gas station from Denny Templeton of Nappanee.
National Oil owns gas stations/convenience stores across the US. The business remained open until the sale was final, which is why Shell did not closed until last weekend.
Elliott is not sure what National Oil intends to do with the business. Elliott said Leeper, still has a couple of weeks to clear out the building, removing his inventory.
It is likely National Oil will reopen the site.
The disappearance of locally owned gas/service stations is a sign of the times. While Shell was the last to close in the downtown Bremen area, the BP station on the corner of Jefferson and Michigan in Plymouth, was the last gas-service station in the downtown Plymouth area.
That business was torn down and a new gas-convenience store was built as an Amoco business before Amoco was purchased by British Petroleum and all Amocos nationwide became BP stations.
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