From newly leased warehouse space in Orlando, PetroLiance serves 21 additional counties in central Florida, in addition to its existing counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, St. Lucie, Indian River, Okeechobee, Lee and Collier. Young Oil Co. Inc. of south Florida was one of the four companies that consolidated to form PetroLiance in June 2006.

This new territory expansion underscores the confidence ExxonMobil has in PetroLiance in fulfilling service commitments to both national accounts and to grow the brand, PetroLiance CEO Kevin McCarter said. With this expansion, our lubricant volume will nearly double in Florida.

The expansion gives PetroLiance coverage of most of Florida except for the northern part and the panhandle of the state. It makes a lot of sense for us because its starting to grow two parts of our southern region, McCarter told Lube Report. Its a big geographic expansion and goes a long way towards growing our Carolinas region and our Florida region together.

McCarter said PetroLiance is expanding its sales force and hiring new drivers and support personnel. We have about 40 employees in Florida, and we are looking to add another 12, he said.

The warehouse is a temporary facility as PetroLiance needed to get up to speed quickly in central Florida, he continued. We have been making some deliveries and ramping up over three weeks, and now we are pretty much at full speed, McCarter said on Monday. Were looking for a more suitable long-term facility.

PetroLiance distributes the entire lineup of ExxonMobil lubricants in Florida, including passenger and commercial vehicle lubricants, industrial lubricants and marine lubricants. Its fairly heavily weighted towards the automotive side in the existing business thats there, he said.

McCarter said PetroLiance sent a team of sales people through the states for a couple of weeks as part of ramping up operations there, and was pleasantly surprised at the lubricants sales potential in central Florida.

Theres a lot of industrial business in the central part of the state, he said. Theres certainly a lot of trucking, and construction and mining business in through there, phosphate mining and the like. The potential is probably less automotive, and more CVO [commercial vehicle operations] and industrial, than what we will be handling initially.

PetroLiance was formed in 2006 through consolidation of four companies: Boncosky Oil Co. of Chicago, Commercial Ullman Lubricants Co. of Ohio, Lubricant Technologies LLC of North Carolina, and Young Oil.