In business since 1928, company is loyal to employees, customers alike
HOLLY HILL — For now, there’s room to walk around in the warehouse behind the business offices of Cunningham Oil Co. on Carswell Avenue, but that won’t be the case in coming months when summer’s inevitable heat waves mean peak season for sales and service of air-conditioning units.
“When that first heat wave comes through, you’re hard-pressed to have room to walk with all the AC units in here,” said Steve Reynolds, vice president of Cunningham Oil, a company that is celebrating 90 years as a fixture in Volusia County in 2018. “We’ll fill this place up when it’s hot out.”
A 24-year veteran of the company, Reynolds, 44, reflects the tight-knit commitment of a business in its fourth-generation of family ownership. Staff turnover is rare and employees often came to know each other before working together in Cunningham’s divisions of AC sales and service, heating oil, LP and propane gas.
“We tend to hire the right people,” he said. “They’re good people who know how to treat each other and know how to treat customers.”
Reynolds, for instance, went to Seabreeze High School with Stacy Cunningham Welch, who became the company’s president in 2012. She took over that role when her father, Lee Culler, died that same year at age 71.
“I had worked 10 years as a school teacher,” first in North Carolina and then at a private school in Volusia County, Welch said. "My parents never pushed me (into the business), but I was the only child, so when dad’s health started failing, I started to wonder, ‘What’s going to happen with the business?’"
“I approached my dad about it, and the next week, he had me out riding in the trucks,” Welch said. “I did that for a good three or four months; going out and crawling around in the attic with them.”
Cunningham Oil was founded in 1928 by Culler's grandfather, Ucal Cunningham, as a Gulf Oil retailer, delivering heating oil that barges carried down the Intracoastal Waterway from the Port of Jacksonville. Cunningham Oil loaded up its tank trucks from a riverfront storage depot on the site now occupied by the Sunset Harbor Yacht Club. (Cunningham also was mayor of Daytona Beach from 1940-1942 and a city commissioner from 1942-1946.)
In 1969, shortly after the company moved from Ballough Road to its current Carswell site, Culler bought the family business from his uncle, Gary Cunningham. He ran the company, literally, until the day he died, his daughter said.
“This was dad’s office, said Welch, 44, whose Cunningham middle name derives from an earlier marriage into another, unrelated, Cunningham family. “I think he would be very proud of the way the business is going.”
Reynolds praised Culler for taking the time to know each employee personally, setting a tone that continues to be his legacy.
“We tend to hire the right people,” Reynolds said. “They’re good people who know how to treat each other and know how to treat customers. I don’t think you could have found a better boss than Lee Culler. There’s nobody in town that would’ve had a bad thing to say about him.”
That applies to Bill Sacks, 69, a longtime customer from Ormond Beach, who learned to patronize the company from his parents, also regular heating oil customers.
“Ucal Cunningham, I grew up with that name selling oil,” Sacks said. “I’d known Stacy’s father forever and he was a great friend. They’ve always been around. I don’t think of going anywhere else.”
In its 90th year, Cunningham employs roughly 48 workers, including a dozen air-conditioning installers, eight AC technicians, five LP gas technicians, four fuel drivers and two dispatchers. A fleet of roughly 50 trucks emblazoned with the company’s copper-and-blue logo are available for 24-hour service calls.
The company made 685 service calls in March alone, a monthly figure that generally tops 1,000 in the hotter summer months, she said.
At the company’s warehouse and bulk plant, enormous elevated white cylinders hold 30,000 gallons each of off-road diesel fuel, non-ethanol gasoline and propane. In the warehouse next door, a former railroad station and sheet metal shop, boxes of AC units share space with materials for duct work and a locked cage containing copper tubing and refrigerant.
The company earned the Carrier Corporation’s President’s Award in 2017 and 2018 for its record of sales, service and customer satisfaction, Reynolds said. A few blocks away, at 201 Ridgewood Ave., the company runs Daytona Gas & Grills, serving residential customers with propane refills and other household accessories.
“Everybody wants a gas fireplace now, gas torches in the backyard, fire pits,” said Reynolds, adding that delivery of home fuel oil has declined significantly since its cost skyrocketed about a decade ago.
Technological advances have accounted for the most significant changes in the company’s daily operation, now split roughly into 75 percent AC sales and repair, and 25 percent LP or propane sales, Welch said.
Looking at the future, she expects the business to keep evolving.
“We just recently got into generators, which everyone is using in the recent hurricanes. We install them and we also sell the propane used to fuel them,” Welch said. “I’m fortunate to have employees who have been here for years and years, and they teach me things. I still learn new things every day.”
If you go:
WHAT: Cunningham Oil Co.
WHERE: 400 Carswell Ave., Holly Hill. Also, Daytona Gas & Grills, 201 Ridgewood Ave., Holly Hill.
HOURS: 24 hour emergency service available by calling 386-253-7621. Daytona Gas & Grills open 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday-Friday; 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday.
ONLINE: cunninghamoil.com
———
About this series:
The Daytona Beach News-Journal is celebrating its 135th birthday this year. To mark the occasion, the newspaper is spotlighting other area businesses that have been around long enough to be an important part of our collective history.
If you are the owner of a business that has been in operation for at least 25 years, or if you want to nominate a longtime business for recognition, please contact reporter Jim Abbott at jim.abbott@news-jrnl.com. Be sure to include your name, phone number, and a little bit about the history of the business.