Victor Hobbs Anderson was born on July 24th 1874. He started out in the grocery business and eventually tired of customers looking over inventory that was about to spoil, forcing him to come down on pricing. He had a desire to shift into an industry where customers weren’t staring down his throat – and decided on the oil business.

Victor was a hell of a Texan. He only ever took one vacation outside of Texas – to the Grand Canyon – where he saw a portrait of a Native American on horseback running in front of the mountains. He decided that would be his logo and he named the business Savage Oil Company. Cars were just coming into existence and drivers needed their oil changed. He decided he would be a purveyor of that oil and make it out of paraffin. He would buy paraffin from theTexaco refinery coming in by rail. They would build fires under the tank cars so the paraffin would melt and they could pump it out and produce cans of motor oil. Mr. Anderson used Savage Oil in his automobile until the day he died. During this time, the Permian Basin began booming. It became glaringly apparent that an independent oil producer like Mr Anderson could not compete with the major oil companies. So, he became a Texaco Oil Distributor. He knew that one day he would have to go into the gasoline business.

Mr. Anderson had two children, a daughter, Hellen Mae, and a son, Victor Hobbs Jr. Mr. Anderson knew he needed to name a successor. As a young woman, Helen attended New Mexico State University where she met and married Henry Clay Summerford, a rancher cowboy in New Mexico outside of Albuquerque, who had a degree in Agronomy from the New Mexico State University. Mr. Anderson eventually invited his new son-in-law, Henry, to join him in the Texas Oil business.

Henry and Hellen raised three sons, Richard, (Dick) Robert, (Bob) and Harry (Kent.) Over the years, all three of them became involved in Savage Oil Company. To keep a long story short, the youngest brother, Kent Summerford eventually bought out his brothers to become the sole Owner and President. There were some twists and turns in his early years of leadership involving El Paso Refinery, and a merger with Trans Mountain Oil, creating TM&S. After some successful years, Kent decided being in charge of a bunch of employees just wasn’t for him and the oil business was too volatile for his liking. He went on to reinvent himself and his business, focused solely on commercial real estate. He pulled completely out of the oil business and began operating Savage Oil’s many properties across El Paso County as commercial rental properties. Old gas stations turned into mechanic shops and he went on to invest in several other commercial properties rounding out his portfolio to roughly 35 in addition to a successful partnership with MIMCO to include a few shopping centers. Having hired only a few part time people for this and that over the years, Kent Summerford remained the only full time employee of Savage Oil until things changed in 2021. One of his favorite lines was, “I pay the bills and I take out the trash.” That’s the way he liked it.

In 2021, at the age of 72, Kent took a step back, handing the business over to his daughter, Megan Campuzano, as Owner and President. Megan, who resides in Austin Texas hired longtime family friends, Joseph Moreno, as Director of Operations, and Gabriel Montes as Operations Assistant. Deb Franklin faithfully contracts as the glue that holds the entire thing together behind the scenes. Megan manages Savage Oil today in honor of Kent Summerford, who passed away March 16, 2024. We know he looks down on us proudly.