About Thermagas

Thermagas, Inc. came to life in 1970 just one year after Olin Merrett purchased a then small propane business located in Sunset, just outside of Bowie. Formerly known as Caswell & Russell Butane Company, the purchase included a number of residential customers, three 3,000 gallon propane tanks, two bobtail delivery trucks and the two employees to drive them.

The first years of the business were financially challenging. Olin limited expenses to a minimum, which included employing his family’s assets to support the company, reinvesting what would have been his paycheck and any profits in the company, and even working on the side for extra income. Four years later the efforts paid off with a respectable number of residential customers and a new contract to supply propane to drilling rigs. Thermagas, Inc. became a volume dealer nearly overnight.

In the early 1980s Thermagas purchased Terral Butane Company located in Terral, Oklahoma, expanding the service area to Southern Oklahoma as well as North Texas.

After the decline in oil field drilling in the mid-1980s, Thermagas purchased the local ice company and began to manufacture and wholesale bagged ice to local stores and commercial accounts; a venture which has proved to work very well with the propane sales and has more than tripled since then.

Thermagas is involved in many of the activities and programs of the communities it serves, and is a member of the Bowie Chamber of Commerce, the Texas Propane Gas Association, and the National Propane Gas Association. Olin and his daughter, Cynthia, have both served terms as State Directors of the Texas Propane Gas Association.

In 2003, Thermagas, Inc. was nominated and received the Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Ethics in the Marketplace. At the awards luncheon, Olin shared with those attending, “Propane and ice are products anyone can sell. The thing that sets us apart from our competitors is our service. Fast, friendly and dependable service at a fair price has been our goal for over 30 years.”