The company is modernizing its Good To Go brand and stores under third-generation leadership with a focus on food, technology and footprint expansion.
Good Oil, now helmed by the third generation of the family business, is celebrating 85 years in business in 2026.
The chain was founded by Don Good Sr. and his wife Mary Good, in Monterey, Ind., in 1941, and got its start as a small petroleum supplier serving local farms and homes. Their sons — Don Jr. and Dean — joined the business and developed the convenience store end of the company. They opened their first c-store in 1971 in Winamac, Ind., where the company’s headquarters are today.
That original c-store “was more of a traditional model,” said Nikki Earp, CEO of Good Oil, with a shop that included the full range of products and services customers expected at the time. From there, the brothers started slowly acquiring “a store here, a store there, as opportunities arose,” Earp said. “It just kind of grew into a life of its own naturally.”
Today, the chain operates 19 stores — 13 in Indiana, five in Ohio and one in Illinois — under the Good To Go banner. Four of the sites are full truck stops.
Earp is Don Jr.’s daughter. She officially stepped into the CEO role earlier this year but, like many next-
generation leaders, she’s been active in the family business her entire life.
“I worked through high school, worked through college, came out of college, worked in the stores, did various accounting functions and different positions in the accounting department, then moved to chief financial officer and then slowly transitioned into the CEO role. It’s been a couple-year transition,” Earp said. “And I probably would say within the last year I really took a hold of the CEO role and moved into that role with my dad exiting more day-to-day (responsibilities). It was a slow transition.”
Her cousin, Wyatt Good, Dean’s son, assumed the duties of president around the same time. Like Earp, he worked at the company throughout high school and moved up through the ranks.
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