Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com

Every serious franchise investor eventually confronts the same fundamental question: am I buying into a proven system or betting on a story? Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com presents an unusual profile in the gasoline stations with convenience stores category — a multigenerational, operationally deep fuel distributor and convenience store operator with roots stretching back to 1953, now operating within one of the most consequential energy distribution consolidations in Pacific Northwest history. Founded in Lewiston, Idaho by Bob Coleman Sr., the business passed to his son Bob Coleman Jr. in 1995 and then welcomed a third generation when Ian Coleman, Bob Sr.'s grandson, joined in 2015 and ascended to the role of President. That seventy-plus-year arc of family ownership — punctuated by more than two dozen strategic acquisitions — produced a platform encompassing 91 cardlock fueling sites, 100 fuel delivery trucks, 12 convenience stores, and bulk fuel storage operations spanning north central Idaho, northern Idaho, Washington, western Montana, and parts of Oregon. On July 31, 2025, NorthStar Energy, a division of Saltchuk, completed the acquisition of Coleman Oil, merging its operations with CityServiceValcon to create a fuel distribution network projected to move nearly 600 million gallons annually across the Pacific and Inland Northwest. The Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com franchise opportunity sits inside this larger ecosystem — a platform of 10 total units, with 8 franchised and no company-owned locations — representing a targeted, regionally anchored entry point into a convenience fuel category whose U.S. market size reached $522.3 billion in 2025. This is not a coast-to-coast mega-brand with thousands of cookie-cutter units. It is a regionally dominant operating company with institutional backing, a defined geographic footprint, and a franchise structure that warrants careful, data-driven evaluation by investors with relevant operational experience.

The gasoline stations with convenience stores industry generated $522.3 billion in U.S. market revenue in 2025 and is tracked at $520.3 billion for 2026, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 0.6% between 2021 and 2026. That near-flat CAGR masks a structurally important set of underlying dynamics. As of December 31, 2025, the United States had 151,975 convenience stores, a slight 0.2% contraction from the prior year, yet the number of stores actively selling fuel increased 0.6% to 122,620 — the highest fuel-selling store count recorded in eight years. Convenience stores collectively sell an estimated 80% of all fuel purchased by U.S. consumers, and 80.7% of all convenience stores now sell fuel, cementing the fuel-convenience bundle as the dominant retail format for everyday energy purchasing. The broader convenience stores market — which captures food service, packaged goods, and ancillary categories beyond fuel — is forecast to grow by $1,036.9 billion at a 7.1% CAGR between 2024 and 2029, driven by accelerating consumer demand for ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat food products, the expansion of private-label brands offering affordability and perceived quality, and the integration of omnichannel strategies that connect in-store purchasing with digital loyalty platforms. The industry remains highly fragmented at its base: 63% of total U.S. store count — 95,672 stores — is owned by operators with 10 or fewer locations, while companies operating 500-plus stores account for just 22.2% of total store count at 33,810 locations. That fragmentation at the small-operator end creates persistent consolidation opportunity for well-capitalized regional platforms like the NorthStar Energy umbrella under which Coleman Oil now operates. The secular tailwinds supporting convenience fuel retail — population-driven fuel demand, consumer preference for time-compressed shopping, food service expansion inside the c-store format, and renewable fuel adoption — all favor operators with diversified revenue streams and the supply chain infrastructure to handle multiple fuel types including renewable diesel, biodiesel, and eventually hydrogen.

The Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com franchise investment range spans from $1,050,000 on the low end to $2,610,000 at the top of the range, positioning it as a mid-to-premium capital commitment within the gasoline stations and convenience store franchise category. This range is consistent with the capital intensity inherent to the sector: convenience store and fuel franchise build-outs require significant real estate preparation, underground storage tank compliance, fuel canopy infrastructure, point-of-sale technology systems, fuel management hardware, and initial inventory stocking. The spread between the $1.05 million floor and the $2.61 million ceiling is likely driven by a combination of geography, site format, whether a franchisee is converting an existing fuel location versus undertaking a greenfield build-out, equipment packages for high-throughput cardlock commercial fueling versus traditional pump-and-store retail configurations, and the cost differentials across the Pacific Northwest real estate markets Coleman Oil serves. The franchise operates with 8 franchised units and 0 company-owned units in its current configuration, meaning the entire active operational footprint is franchisee-run — a structure that places real responsibility on the franchise system's support infrastructure and the franchisor's ability to deliver consistent brand and operational standards without a company-owned proving ground. With the parent platform now under NorthStar Energy and Saltchuk's institutional ownership, the financial backing and supply chain leverage available to the system represents a meaningful shift from the prior family-owned structure. The FPI Score for Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com is 56, which PeerSense classifies as Moderate — a signal that warrants neither uncritical enthusiasm nor reflexive dismissal, but rather disciplined due diligence against the full data set. The $1.05 million minimum investment makes this a commitment sized for serious investors with real capital resources, not first-time entrepreneurs testing the waters with a low-cost service franchise. Prospective investors should consult with SBA-approved lenders familiar with fuel distribution and convenience store franchises, as the physical infrastructure and real property components of this model typically create asset collateral relevant to commercial lending discussions.

The daily operating reality of a Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com franchise unit is grounded in the core disciplines of fuel retail management: inventory control across both fuel and in-store product categories, fuel accounting and reconciliation, pump maintenance oversight, customer service execution, vendor check-in, weekly product ordering, payroll management, and staffing coordination. Based on employee operational reviews, unit managers are responsible for counting and balancing books and fuel daily, running all aspects of store operations, and managing the staff scheduling demands that are endemic to fuel retail — a category where coverage gaps create direct revenue loss the moment a pump lane goes unattended. The labor model is relatively intensive given that convenience fuel retail is fundamentally a high-frequency, high-touch consumer interaction format operating across extended daily hours. The corporate infrastructure that Coleman Oil brings to its franchise partners includes distribution centers, delivery fleets capable of 30-delivery-per-day routing capacity, technical services personnel, and trained logistics operators who support commercial fuel accounts. Coleman Oil's network of CFNnet commercial fueling sites — which numbered more than 90 as of the company's most recent operational disclosures — provides franchisees in commercial-adjacent markets access to a fleet fueling customer base that supplements traditional consumer convenience store revenue. The December 2023 partnership between Neste and Coleman Oil to supply renewable diesel to Washington state signals that the brand is actively building out alternative fuel supply capabilities, which gives operators in states with renewable fuel incentive structures an additional product line with potentially differentiated margin profiles. Training for new franchisees, based on available operational data, covers retail business fundamentals including daily paperwork systems, deposit management, change order protocols, safe balancing, payroll execution, vendor management, inventory ordering, and customer service standards. The integration with NorthStar Energy's combined platform suggests that the operational playbook will continue to evolve as the parent company standardizes best practices across both Coleman Oil and CityServiceValcon operations.

Item 19 financial performance data is not disclosed in the current Franchise Disclosure Document for Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com. This absence of franchisee-level financial performance representation means that prospective investors cannot draw on audited or systematically reported unit-level revenue, EBITDA, or payback period figures from the FDD itself. That said, Coleman Oil Company as a corporate entity carries estimated annual revenue of $45.5 million, with an estimated revenue per employee of $269,500 across its workforce of 247 employees as of December 31, 2022 — a headcount figure that represented a 43.0% increase from December 2021, reflecting the growth trajectory the company was executing through that period. Industry benchmarks provide important framing for projecting unit-level performance: the U.S. convenience store and gasoline station market at $522.3 billion across roughly 122,620 fuel-selling locations implies an average revenue per fuel-selling store of approximately $4.26 million annually, though this blended average spans enormous format variation from small rural independents to high-volume urban superstores. For a franchised convenience fuel format operating in the Pacific Northwest with cardlock commercial fueling capability — the model that Coleman Oil has systematically built through acquisitions including the 2021 Busch Distributing and Sunset Marts deal, the 2024 Lind Fuel Company and Beamis Oil assets, and 15-plus prior acquisitions spanning 1977 to 2019 — unit economics are shaped by the blend of consumer fuel volume, in-store merchandise margin, commercial cardlock account revenue, and lubricants distribution ancillary income. Investors evaluating the Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com franchise cost and revenue profile without Item 19 data should request detailed territory-specific volume data, review the FDD carefully with a franchise attorney, and speak directly with existing franchisees under the system to develop a grounded unit economic model before committing capital in the $1.05 million to $2.61 million range.

Coleman Oil Company's growth trajectory is most accurately understood as the story of a systematic regional consolidator that executed more than 20 acquisitions across nearly five decades before itself becoming an acquisition target of a larger institutional platform. Starting from a single operation in Lewiston, Idaho in 1953, the company added Simon Oil in 1977, Gleason Oil in 1982, the Lewiston division of Palouse Producers in 1984, O'Keefe Oil in 1994 and 1995, Himmelberger Oil in 2000, Clark Oil in 2004 adding Coeur d'Alene, Sandpoint, and Spokane coverage, North Central Petroleum Inc. in 2007 bringing 12 bulk plants, 7 cardlocks, and 4 retail facilities in central Washington, Wondrack Distributing in Kennewick in 2015, McEvoy Oil in Bellingham in 2019, and Busch Distributing with its six Sunset Mart stores and 24 commercial fueling sites in 2021. Each acquisition extended the geographic footprint, layered in new customer segments, and deepened the supply chain infrastructure. The competitive moat Coleman Oil has constructed rests on four interlocking pillars: geographic density across the Pacific Northwest creating logistics efficiency for fuel delivery routing; multi-product capability spanning gasoline, diesel, biodiesel, renewable diesel, lubricants, and commercial fleet fueling; a CFNnet cardlock network that locks in commercial fleet accounts through contractual fueling relationships; and now, institutional supply chain leverage through NorthStar Energy and its Saltchuk parent. The January 2023 letter of intent between PowerTap Hydrogen Fueling Corp. and Coleman Industrial Gases for CO2 and hydrogen purchase negotiations signals early-stage positioning in the hydrogen fuel supply chain — a category that will matter increasingly as commercial fleet electrification and hydrogen adoption advance across the Pacific Northwest freight corridor. With the combined Coleman Oil and CityServiceValcon platform under NorthStar Energy projecting 600 million gallons of annual fuel distribution, the franchise units operate as customer-facing retail nodes within a vertically integrated supply and distribution ecosystem of considerable scale.

The ideal candidate for a Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com franchise opportunity is an investor with hands-on operational experience in fuel retail, convenience store management, or commercial fleet fueling — or a background in multi-site retail operations management with the financial resources to deploy between $1.05 million and $2.61 million in initial investment. The operational complexity of running a fuel franchise — daily fuel reconciliation, pump maintenance responsibility, environmental compliance requirements for underground storage tank management, and the labor intensity of extended-hours retail staffing — means that passive or absentee ownership presents meaningful execution risk compared to an engaged owner-operator or an experienced multi-unit retail management group. The franchise system's current footprint of 8 franchised units across 10 total locations suggests a relatively early-stage franchise development effort, which creates both opportunity and risk: franchisees who enter during a system's growth phase can potentially access preferred territory positions, but they also bear more of the system-building uncertainty compared to investors entering an established franchise with hundreds of proven units. Geographic focus for the Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com franchise opportunity centers on the Pacific and Inland Northwest — specifically north central and northern Idaho, Washington state, western Montana, and parts of Oregon — markets where Coleman Oil has deep operational infrastructure, established fuel supply relationships, and brand recognition built across seven decades of continuous operation. Investors in markets adjacent to existing Coleman Oil cardlock and bulk fuel infrastructure may find the most direct path to commercial fleet account development, which is the revenue category most likely to deliver volume stability independent of consumer traffic fluctuations.

Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com represents a franchise opportunity that sits at the intersection of a capital-intensive but operationally mature regional energy platform and a convenience fuel retail category generating $522.3 billion in annual U.S. market revenue. The investment thesis rests on several convergent factors: the brand's 70-plus years of operational history across the Pacific Northwest, its integration into NorthStar Energy's 600-million-gallon annual distribution platform under Saltchuk's institutional ownership with Bert Valdman as President and CEO, the structural demand for fuel retail and cardlock commercial fueling in a region with a significant freight, agriculture, and commercial fleet economy, and the convenience store industry's 7.1% CAGR growth forecast through 2029 driven by food service expansion and private-label product demand. The Moderate FPI Score of 56 reflects the honest complexity of evaluating a system with 8 franchised units, no disclosed Item 19 financial performance data, and a franchise infrastructure that has historically been built around company acquisition growth rather than franchisee development — factors that make independent due diligence not merely advisable but essential. PeerSense provides exclusive due diligence data including SBA lending history, FPI score, location maps with Google ratings, FDD financial data, and side-by-side comparison tools that allow investors to benchmark the Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com franchise investment against competing concepts in the gasoline stations with convenience stores category across the same capital range, territory markets, and operational profiles. The decision to invest $1.05 million to $2.61 million in any franchise requires more than a brand's marketing narrative — it requires the kind of structured, independent intelligence that separates informed capital allocation from expensive guesswork. Explore the complete Coleman Oil Company, LLC - Com franchise profile on PeerSense to access the full suite of independent franchise intelligence data.