Hess Trucks, The Holiday Tradition That Started at a Gas Station

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Everyone deserves real. Visit eBay.com for terms. Music. We bring you the story behind this iconic brand, both from the Hess toy truck director and a superfan.

Here's Robbie with the story. For many families across the country, the holiday season doesn't start until they hear the Hess jingle come across the airwaves. These green and white toy trucks and race cars and spaceships have been found underneath Christmas trees since 1964.

But where did this all start? Here's Justin Mayer, director of brand marketing and general manager of Hess toy trucks, to tell us more. My family emigrated here in the early 1900s. He was born in 1914. His father was originally a butcher, but when he came here to the States, he actually got into the coal delivery business. And as everybody knows, as you get into the 20s and the 30s, times were a little tough here in America, and people are doing what they can to make ends meet. His business went bankrupt, and Leon Hess was working for his father at the time. So here we are in the Great Depression.

The family is not doing well, to be frank. But in 1933, when his family's business goes bankrupt, he essentially reorganizes it and turns it from a coal business into a oil delivery business. He buys a 1926 Chevy 615-gallon tanker truck, which is very iconic, and people will recognize it because it's a toy that we've produced since then, a replica of that.

And the original one sits in our corporate offices today. But he reorganizes the assets of his father's bankrupt business, and he starts this Hess Corporation, which is really the start, in 1933, of Hess today. And over the next couple of years, he grows his fleet to a handful of fuel delivery trucks, and he's going door-to-door seven days a week, starting in Perth Amboy, New Jersey.

Then World War II comes. Leon enlists, and he actually ends up working for General Patton as a fuel delivery logistics expert. But he comes back from the war with all of this extra learning about fuel supply and how to move and logistics, and he says, you know, we can do more than just deliver fuel oil. So he starts expanding the fleet of fuel delivery, but he also builds his first refinery, so that way he can have different types of fuel that he's delivering with all of his truck fleets. And then he says, oh, wow, if we can make all these different types of fuel, including gasoline, why am I just selling that to other people? I can sell it direct to customers if I build gas stations.

So it's so entrepreneurial, the entrepreneurial spirit, right, the idea that I can do anything, it's the American dream, I can build it from scratch, and he does. So about 1960, the first Hess gas station is built. Now, I say that because many of your listeners have never heard of a Hess gas station. But what they will recognize around this time, because he was so successful with his fuel oil delivery business and then his refinery and then his gas stations, is he actually becomes wealthy enough to become a partial owner in what ultimately will become the New York Jets, the NFL football team. By 1963, he's got a bunch of gas stations in New Jersey. He's a partial owner of the Titans, which become the New York Jets, which, by the way, they're green and white for a reason. And the history of the Hess toy truck actually starts at a Jet game. The story goes that Leon Hess is at a Jets game with a friend of his, longtime friend that he grew up with from the neighborhood of Perth Amboy, who happened to be in the toy business. Mark's Toys was a Virginia-based toy manufacturer, very popular in the 50s and 60s.

They're no longer in business today. But apparently during conversation of the game, hey, Leon, have you ever thought about offering something other than gas at your gas stations? You know, we could make a really cool toy that would be really interesting.

And so then you could start seeing the wheels turn with Leon. He goes, well, one of the things that always stuck with him as a kid, as he later recounted the story, was that during the Great Depression, you know, he didn't have at the holiday times. He saw others didn't have at the holiday times. So he wanted a toy that not just was, oh, I can sell this at my gas station. It was something special and different and unique to Hess. It was going to be of quality that nobody could match. It was going to be innovative and above all else, besides the quality of it, it was going to be affordable. And so in 1964, the Hess toy truck hits the market for the first time. And what is it? It's an oil tanker.

So it's a truck with one of those long oil tankers that you would see them deliver fuel oil directly into the gas stations. And the actual toy itself was really innovative in a couple of ways. One, it had batteries included, which before that time didn't exist. People weren't putting batteries in the toys. So one, from an affordability standpoint, you didn't have to go out and buy extra batteries.

And two, it was really easy to get because the minute you could open it, the kids could play with it. Now, it also had working lights. Very few toys back then actually had electronics. If you can think back to the early 1960s, there wasn't like a lot of electronics in any toy vehicle.

Very few, in fact. And it also had the ability to fill up water into the tank and a hose that could empty the water out of it. So it was really something special. Our history all says that the first retail price is $1.29. Now, others will say, you know, we actually can't find anything other than signs that say $1.39 is the price.

We know that for sure. So there's all speculation about where the $1.29 comes from. But let's just call it $1.30, make it easy. But that was the first, you know, the first Hess toy truck back in 1964. And because it was such a cool toy and it was so affordable, it sold out really fast. And so they said, wow, this is a great idea. We should do this again next year. So they did it again next year. Wow.

Sold out even faster. And we should we should we should let's figure out what else we can do here. Now, where do we go with this thing? And so what happened was it really created this. You think about the Cabbage Patch Kid type craziness in the 1980s. Well, Hess predated that quite a long time because you couldn't go to Toys R Us or today Wal-Mart or Target or Amazon or whatever. The only way you could get the most popular toy was to stand in line at a gas station.

They would go on sale on Thanksgiving Day. And so it became this really interesting holiday tradition. You know, mom would get up and start the turkey and dad would get up, you know, go to the gas station, stand in line with his coffee, and he could be out there a couple of hours waiting in line that goes wrapped around the block to get two Hess trucks, cash only.

And if you wanted more back of the line, start again. And it became this this tradition where families started to look forward to this and people would meet other families in line and they would get to know these people. And every year they would make a tradition out of getting up. And sometimes when the kids were old enough, they would join in on this and they would go out with dad as like this cool tradition. Like some people go to the Macy's parade, other people were going to the Hess locations and just hanging out for a couple of hours till they got their trucks. And they would sell out very fast. And so people would line up for the fear of not wanting to miss out.

And what was really also pretty cool about it is for years and years and years, it was on Thanksgiving. But it got to the point where the police effectively needed to be involved to mitigate the traffic issues around the Hess stations. And so a call from the governor basically saying, look, please, can we do this not on a holiday? Because, like, we really don't want to have all of our officers out there.

It's not fair. They want to be home. And we said, yes, of course, we can accommodate that. And so we ended up shifting the on sale day off of the traditional Thanksgiving day out of understanding of the issues that we were creating with all the traffic jams and already very busy travel holiday holiday time. But it became this spark for this frantic collectability of these toy trucks. And because they were hard to get like anything else, it became really valuable in the resale market. And you've been listening to Justin Mayer, director of brand marketing and general manager of Hess Toy Truck.

And when we come back, more of the story of Hess toy trucks here on Our American Stories. When the world gets in the way of your music, try the new Bose QuietComfort earbuds, too. Next gen earbuds uniquely tuned to the shape of your ears. They use exclusive Bose technology that personalizes the audio performance to fit you, delivering the world's best noise cancellation and powerfully immersive sound so you can hear and feel every detail of the music you love. Bose QuietComfort earbuds, too.

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Say what to watch into your Xfinity voice remote. And we're back with our American stories and the story of Hess Toy Trucks, the East Coast holiday phenomenon that has now spread across the country. When we last left off, we heard how folks would line up around the block to buy a toy truck. I did that myself with my brothers and at all places at a gas station. And there was not a Hess station in our town.

We had to go to the next town to do it and walk there. Back to Justin Mayer, director of brand marketing and general manager of Hess Toy Truck, with the rest of the story. So early on, the goal of the Hess Toy Truck was to produce a very realistic vehicle that was something that existed in the real Hess business. So the example, the first one of that oil tanker that would, and when I say oil tanker, I mean one that drives on the road. And that's important clarification.

I'll get to that in a second. Then you would drive to the gas station and then the fuel jumps into the big containers underground. So that was the first one. And shortly after that, we did the actual ocean freight oil carrier, right?

Tanker as they call it. It was the Voyager, which was really a large vessel, an oil vessel carrying boat vessel that Hess did own. And that was highly successful in 1967. So it was like this awesome, 18 inches long. It was ginormous, highly detailed, had lights, really cool. In fact, if you can get your hands on one of those today, they go for like $4,000.

So really, you know, a collector's piece today. But after that, they kept on with other things that Hess did, ranging from fire trucks and people like, well, what do you need fire trucks? Well, at refineries, it's really important to have emergency services vehicles. So we had fire trucks, we had box trucks that we would use that would have little drum barrels of oil that would be used for transportation. So they were very popular for a number of years, different box trucks and things of that nature, all the way really up until the late 1980s. And in the late 1980s, they said, you know, kids are sort of they love these toys. They love to play with them. We should really do something that's a little bit more fun to play with.

You know, we know that the collectors love like, yes, it's a Hess product, but this is made for kids, the kids toys. So let's do some some cooler things, some fun things. And we started introducing products that really had nothing to do with the Hess traditional business of, you know, running gas stations and refineries and drilling for oil and natural gas and all of that. And so you started seeing, you know, the whole racing thing, a lot of race cars came in the years after that. And then we started pushing boundaries further and you ended up with, well, now we're not just giving you one toy. Now we're going to give you two toys.

So here's a truck and a race car. And so you started seeing all of this sort of innovation in product. But again, only one toy was released a year. And so you didn't know what it was going to be.

It was top secret until it came out on sale. And with this ever expanding type of vehicle, what we started seeing was that on Christmas morning, people weren't just playing with the gift they got that year. They would go out, dig up all the old ones out of their basement or take them out of the closet and use them either as holiday decoration because they all lit up and they look beautiful under the Christmas tree or on the mantle. But then they would play with all of their collection and create this amazing imaginary play world of Hess. And because, well, now I have a fire truck and I have a tanker and I have a race car and I have a helicopter and I have a spaceship. All of a sudden it becomes just a world of play. And so folks think about, oh, well, Lego, you can play with it in so many different ways.

And that's why it's got staying power. Well, that's really true of the Hess truck fleet, too, because there's so many different ways to create new play scenarios with it. And as your collection grows, so does who you play with. And I think that's an important point, too, because what we found was the the trucks, not only were they just fun to play with, but they became a very emotional bond between the gift recipient and the gift giver.

Somebody had to care enough to wake up on Thanksgiving morning and stand in line in the freezing cold in some parts of the country and make sure they got you that Hess truck before it sold out. And it became a tradition. So every year, you know, people will come up to me and say, oh, I used to get it as a kid. And the next line is always, it was my uncle who or my aunt, whatever. It's not just the toy, it's who gave me the toy.

And that's something that's really unique. And the tradition of that continues today where people are always like, well, you know, my dad passed now, but now I carry on the tradition for my kids and their kids and that handing off of the tradition. And sometimes we hear fights within a family over who gets to be the one that gives the Hess toy trucks when the older generation has passed on because it's been almost 60 years. And we see that that transition. It's one thing to talk about customer loyalty and the impact test trucks have had on generations, but it's another thing to hear from those people themselves.

Here's Mike Roberto, author of the Hess Truck Encyclopedia. Here's how my story starts. It's 1977. I'm five years old. I believe it was like a Wednesday night. It was a school night. I remember that I was going to probably kindergarten at the time.

Right. And my dad didn't get home till about five thirty six o'clock. And I remember my mom telling me something about wait until like your dad gets home.

But in the good way, not the oh, wait until your dad gets home, you know. And I remember it was cold and dark and we lived in the Bronx at the time in New York. I remember my dad let me sit in the front seat.

OK. Which was, you know, a big thing for a little kid. And I remember and he and he took me to he took me to the Hess station to to get a toy truck.

Right. And what was interesting is we had a family mechanic. His name was Rocco. And I remember, you know, whenever we brought the cars to him because my mom had a car and my dad had a car. And I remember everything there was all dirty and greasy and grimy.

You know, it's it's it's a mechanic's garage. Right. And when we got to the station, you know, everything was just lit up so white and clean and pretty. And I remember asking my dad, you know, how how could they be so so all like white and clean? I mean, to me, it looked like I was in heaven. Right. And my dad had explained to me that he well, he said that, you know, they don't fix cars here.

They just sell gas. So that's how it can be all white and clean. And I remember as a five year old, it blew my mind. I understood the reference like it made sense to me, you know, and I felt I felt like a big kid for that. You know, and I remember being I remember that moment more than getting the physical truck at the station. But I do remember we went inside and there was a guy with a metal desk and and, you know, they had the trucks inside what they call the fish bowl or the fish tank. So and I remember playing with a toy, of course. And so not too long after that, it my dad had he became terminal.

He had a form of muscular dystrophy. Anyway, that memory went on to become only one of three positive memories that I have of my dad before he became sick. And, you know, years later, not too long after his passing, I remember driving in Long Island, because at this point we lived in Queens and naturally there wasn't many stations around where we lived.

But every time I drove past a station, you know, going to Long Island, I always thought of my dad, you know, and I was like, oh, you know, it was it was it was that positive neural association. The Hess fandom truly is something amazing. It includes everyone from little boys from the Bronx to Olympic gold medalists.

It's amazing. Every year I hear of other people who are fans of the Hess track and have some relation to the Hess track. You know, I don't know, two or three years ago, we sold out really early. And all of a sudden I get like this direct DM from Michael Phelps. I'm like, this has to be like a joke, right?

Sure enough. No, he waited too long and we sold out. And he's like, oh, I got three boys. I bet he grew up in Baltimore on that. I got to get these things.

What do I do? I'm like, hey, we sold out. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but by fast. But it's funny, we hear those kinds of stories, we get reached out by people all the time that have a strong connection to that. A lot of celebrities. And so it's just great. It's a great tradition that lives on.

And so many people are part of it that you don't even realize it. But it really touches my heart every year when I get, you know, every day I wake up to a new set of emails or videos. I gave it for Hanukkah last night. And so it's like I get all these.

Oh, look, here's my video of my kid opening it. They all just love it. And it's really it's heartwarming. It's heartwarming. And a special thanks to Robbie on the production of that piece. What a delight. And a special thanks to Justin Mayer from Hess Toy Truck. And also a special thanks to Mike Roberto.

Fandom defined right there, folks. The Hess Truck Encyclopedia is his contribution to this world that I know and so many East Coast people grew up with. What I did not know is the story of Leon Hess and his father. A Lithuanian Jew comes to this country, starts a coal delivery company, goes into bankruptcy. His son takes up the mantle, turns it into a oil delivery company, a mini empire. By the way, learned a lot of what he needed to learn from General Patton. What a beautiful and big and bold story about a man, his dream and how his family kept it going.

The story of the Hess Toy Truck here on Our American Stories. There's a better way to fly. Instead of being stuck in endless lines and packed onto planes, try simplifying your travel with Surf Air. Save an average of two hours on every trip and avoid crowded airports with a new way to fly private. With Surf Air, you'll fly from smaller airports closer to your home. There are no lines, no waiting and no stress. SurfAir.com, the best alternative to commercial air travel that makes flying easy. Get a free quote on your next flight at SurfAir.com.

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