Background

My involvement in the petrol management industry started out inevitably courtesy of my dad in 1986. After years in the Government service, he decided to make an early exit and try his luck ‘outside’, in the private sector. Formerly from the road transport division in the Government, my dad started to get involve businesses related to it (transport) via his decade or so experience handling governmental projects and events. His resume in the private sector after he left include the management of buses, car rentals and a Japanese-run factory managing steel. He got work from the last, Jap one courtesy of his management skills whilst he was still serving (the Government).

His romance with the petrol pump management began when he answered Petronas’ advertisement calls for a new dealer at their (Petronas Dagangan Berhad (PDB)) petrol stations nationwide. With mom, family and his close friends’ encouragements and with a limited but sufficient savings as capital, my dad enrolled himself to be interviewed, shortlisted and eventually, as luck and good fate had it, chosen him to be one of PDB’s pioneers in the then, burgeoning and growing petrol retail business. Dad’s station is in Jalan Cochrane off Jalan Peel, near the Pudu market.

At 13 and growing up, the petrol business has been synonymous with our lifestyle and the 98.733% topic often discussed in daily conversations with family and friends. I practically grew up at the kiosk as it is the place my dad and mom would spend most of their time at. We practically smell of petrol and grease by the time we come home at night sometimes very late. So much for grease lightning.

I have been in all the ‘departments’ (if you may call it) in a petrol station business from being a greasy (but ever charming) pump attendant, car washer, mechanic assistant (more to a pest than assisting) to the management side in supervising the team, conjuring promotions and marketing strategies to boost sales and the tricky business dealings with the customers and even worse, handling the stringent and no-nonsense boss in PDB.

Like many petrol dealers will attest, the petrol management business has more than its downs than its privileges especially today with the ever increasing petrol prices, sharp rise in cost of living and non-stop competitions from other brands, not mentioning fellow dealers of the same brand. If you can see today, there is an influx of petrol stations at every different corner. Sometimes you can spot 2 different petrol kiosks opposite to each other or in the same, small neighbourhood. Pathetic. People would think that getting a petrol kiosk is like hitting the jackpot. The BIG lottery. Honestly, it depends on the location, location and location. Even so, that is no longer a guarantee. Naturally, it’s more of a ‘Indah Khabar Dari Rupa’(Ain’t pretty as it looks) take.

When I started to really manage the petrol kiosk full time in the year 2000, we have had problems with our station’s location starting from the relocation of Government servants, who were our main and loyal customers, to Putrajaya. Our bulk of 10,000 litre sales per day practically derived from these people who at one time populate one of the most celebrated places in town at Jalan Cochrane and Kampung Pandan, KL. Years passed and with other petrol kiosks opened which ‘robbed’ and diverted our customers away from us. Robbing would be too harsh of a picture but our sales took a drastic plunge for the worse and it hurt us bad. Years later, with the Government of Malaysia started to embark on their quest to build the first SMART Tunnel in the world as steps to eradicate traffic congestion caused by flash flood in the Klang Valley. The construction years of this tunnel with was going around the vicinity of our petrol kiosk. Concurrent road closures, building of dividers against the ingress to the station, muddy & dusty roads and the relocated population, contributed to one of the worst sales that we have ever experienced after more than 20 years’ of operation.

We were getting desperate as weekends were the worst as we are situated in a non-residential area. With most of our Cochrane neighbours-cum-customers relocated some kilometres away outside KL, our business depends mostly on credit account customers and passer-by and of course, hardcore customers who - may God bless them – that took the trouble to come all the way from their houses to fill-up petrol at my dad’s kiosk even when there are other petrol kiosks closer to home.

All these hardship prompted me to come up with this blog where we can interact with the public at large on whether they have heard of any free stuffs, great discounts, cool events currently on offer at any of the petrol kiosks in the country or abroad. Plus we also intend to dwell on interesting attributes of a particular petrol station or anything that concerns the petrol management business. In addition, we will bring you some of the happenings at our kiosk and other miscellaneous things we face in life.

Enjoy.