Major and Burmah petrol pumps, early 1980s

Extracted from two different sections of a Burmah Oil Trading brochure called "A pictorial profile of the Burmah Oil Company 1886–1986" — no information on locations, but the Major site is likely to have been in Yorkshire/Humberside/East Midlands.

It reminds me how the Major pump (and tanker) livery of this era, with its extra blue stripes, was mildly more interesting than the Burmah one, not simply the same thing but in yellow rather than red. Is the Major pump a Tokheim?

If my understanding is right, this Burmah pump livery with the solid red panel was already obsolete by 1986, in favour of the one seen here: www.flickr.com/photos/danlockton/51697133092 — this seems like quite an old photo to have used, with a Princess that had been phased out in 1981. The Gilbarco Highline pump display is in gallons, which although still legal would have been unusual on what looks like a modern (probably company-owned forecourt) by 1986 — most big brands started the conversion process in late 1981. The Burmah racing jacket is pretty cool though.

The brochure discusses how the Burmah logo ("its design based on the oil industry's unit of measurement, the barrel") was introduced in 1968 to try to raise the public profile of Burmah particularly in the UK as petrol retailing started, where the initials B.O.C. which Burmah had used previously (e.g. in India) were more readily associated with the British Oxygen Company. "The basic design allowed for modification to suit subsidiary companies by replacing the name 'Burmah' with their own name" — as we see here with Major — "but it was decided not to impose the design on Group companies with long established trade marks, such as the universally recognised Castrol roundel or the charging rhinoceros of Assam Oil".

In south and central America, Burmah's Anglo-Ecuadorian Oilfields subsidiary used the Anglo name (unrelated to the British petrol company) in a similar barrel logo, and there is a too-small-to-read photo in this same brochure of a Lobitos tanker in Peru in 1969 which also appears to have a version of the Burmah barrel logo, but whether it was actually modified to read Lobitos or not is unclear. Certainly in the UK and Ireland, the Lobitos logo used on petrol stations pre-dated the Burmah barrel, and was quickly replaced by it when the Burmah name was introduced. Curfew was also rapidly replaced, but Major, and Apex, were kept for decades. Ian Byrne has some very useful information here www.petrolmaps.co.uk/burmah.htm on how the different Burmah-owned brands around the world presented themselves.

Some rights reserved

Taken in: UK / England / Wroughton / Swindon (show map)

Taken on: January 1, 1986

Tags:

Burmah

Burmah Oil Trading

Burmah Castrol

Burmah Castrol plc

petrol

petrol station

petrol pump

Gilbarco Highline

Tokheim

Major

Major & Co

Majors

Castrol

Castrol GTX

Princess

Leyland Princess

tanker

Leyland « less

Sets appears in: • Petrol station logos and ephemera • Twenty-Six Hundred Petrol Stations

Groups appears in: • Period (pre 2000) British petrol station pictures • Motoring

Stats: 1,857 views / 4 comments

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder