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Overlake Oil Inc  1947 - 2010

Harry W. Wright originally established Overlake Oil Inc as Harre Wright Oil in 1947, retiring after twenty-five years as a territory sales representative with Union Oil Co. Located just south of downtown Kirkland, Wright distributed bulk gasoline, diesel, furnace oil and lubricants to businesses and residences on the Eastside. In those days the Eastside was sparsely populated, with post -floating bridge commerce still in its infancy. Winning the Madison Park ferry diesel business bid from the Kirkland City Council in the early 1950’s, at 10.4 cents per gallon, provided working capital that fueled the growth of the company.

Wayne Jessen, Wright’s son-in-law, joined the company in 1958 hoping to learn the business and to provide some much needed help. Through most of the sixties Overlake Oil supplied fuel and lubricants to companies involved with construction of the interstate 405 freeway project. This job required being on-site daily at 5 a.m. and fueling heavy construction equipment for three cents per gallon commission fee.

In 1961 Wright bought McKail Oil Company, a Shell Oil distributor, and moved Wright & Jessen Oil to the McKail site at the southern half of Houghton Beach Park in Kirkland. This site had a dock and four large upright storage tanks as well as warehousing to store drums and cases of oil. The buyout of McKail marked the end of the Union Oil Company affiliation for Overlake Oil and the beginning of the Shell Oil relationship.

In 1972, at the City’s urging, Shell Oil Company sold the Lake Washington Boulevard land to the City of Kirkland for park expansion. The company heretofore known as Wright & Jessen was faced with having to relocate. At the same time nature of the oil business changed from commission agents paid a fee to consign and deliver the major oil companies’ products, to completely independent "jobbers" who owned their inventory and equipment. Suddenly the company needed to rededicate all efforts and resources to building once again, from the ground up.

Wayne Jessen took the helm, incorporating as Overlake Oil in 1972 and reestablishing the company at 1005 8th Street Kirkland. For office space a Shell Oil service station, once located on Lake Street, was purchased for five dollars and moved through downtown Kirkland in the middle of the night to its new site. Right on the heels of this upheaval the first fuel crisis, the OPEC oil embargo, hit the company in 1973. Overnight, major oil companies were limiting their jobbers to 10% of the previous year’s purchases. This tested Jessen’s creativity and perseverance to keep customers supplied.

In the mid-seventies, Wright retired, although he continued to drop by into the early eighties.

Jessen installed one of the first keylock fueling systems on the eastside in 1976. This was the earliest automated fueling technology, which made possible self serve unattended vehicle fueling.

Jim Jessen and Steve Merrill, Wayne Jessen’s son and son-in-law, joined Overlake in 1981 and 1982. Jim Jessen and Merrill helped Overlake Oil develop the local keylock market until the company joined the Pacific Pride Commercial Fueling network in 1987.

Pacific Pride is an affiliation of jobbers, like Overlake Oil, that are networked together electronically to share locations so their customers can fuel all over the United States and Canada. This cardlock franchise enabled Overlake Oil to market outside the Puget Sound area and greatly expand its business. 

1987 marked the passing of the founder, Harry Wright.  He was ninety years old.

In 1990, responding to stringent regulation governing underground storage tanks, Overlake Oil invested over a quarter million dollars upgrading their underground storage tanks. For a company of five employees it was a big commitment of money and effort to take the company into the next era.

In 1993, Jim Jessen and Merrill bought the business and became the third generation to run Overlake Oil, allowing Wayne to retire. With new leadership the company focused on growing the lubricants business into a regionally recognized leader. By the year 2000, the company had forged relationships with many of the regions leading manufacturers and become recognized as the premier market leader in the industrial lubricants sector.

Today the company markets high quality lubricants and services throughout western Washington and beyond, to customers looking for more than just oil products. In 2009, after 62 years in business Overlake Oil joined the list of Shell Oil’s top 100 lubricants distributors in the nation.