Oil company road maps from Belgium

Maps of all the major brands can be found from the 1960s. The first two shown, from Fina and Trading, both date from around 1960. The Fina map was produced by de Rouck at 1:350,000 and - unusually for Belgian maps - printed on one side of the paper only, which made it quick thick as it folded to a small cover size (195 x 75mm). Trading overcame the linguistic problem of how to position the French and Dutch by the simple expedient of just using the international car registration codes "B" and "L". However, as the reverse was NL (Netherlands) the option of reversible covers - as used on the Fina and Mobil maps - was not possible. Trading used the Dutch cartographer of Bootsma for this issue. Caltex's map dates from 1963 and was also by de Rouck at 1:350,000. Mobil's map from Cartographie Mercedes at 1:400,000 unusually had different pictures for its two covers: the French side shows a night scene of the Grand Place in Brussels, which does not show up too well in black and white! Finally the Esso issue dates from 1969 and was prepared by L. Hannesse, using designs originally based on those from General Drafting Co. This example was overprinted with a British price (2/6d), but in Belgium it would have cost around F15.

1970s

In the 1970s Belgium probably had more brands of petrol per square kilometre than any other country. There was little price competition other than from SECA, so stations took to issuing trading stamps such as Valois, Melior, Comidac and FORT, which are promoted on the Gulf map shown below. A few Total and Fina stations even gave away Green Shield Stamps to visiting British motorists, but the map of Belgium and Luxembourg offered by the Green Shield company was no more than a simple outline affair showing the towns with participating stations.

Gulf's 1970 map was by Falkplan and marked towns with Gulf outlets at a scale of 1:320,000. The Chevron map is two years younger and did not mark its locations; de Rouck used the slightly larger scale of 1:300,000. The 1973 SECA map was by Girault Gilbert at the same scale and took the alternative approach of listing station addresses in a booklet stapled inside the cover. The following year's Aral map comes from a German set, but still marks all Aral's Belgian locations on the map. The same Busche map would probably have been sold in Belgium, although it is at the significantly less generous scale of 1:500,000. After the mid 1970s maps become less common, as cover prices rose, sales fell and more petrol companies moved to use standard commercial issues. BP kept its own design for a while - the 1976 example shown above is by Cartographie Mercedes (at 1:400,000).

1980s

Filling station numbers declined less rapidly in Belgium than in many other European countries, possibly because price competition from hypermarkets was blunted after the two largest chains (Delhaize and GB) sold their service station networks to Mobil and Shell respectively. However, as for other countries, branded petrol maps are uncommon from the decade.

The map (left) from Russian-controlled Nafta actually dates from the late 1970s. Two Belgian independents also issued maps in the 1980s: Pollet's comes from 1981 and is similar in design to a map by BP, its main supplier, whereas the tiny OTA brand added its covers - in Dutch only - to a Claus-Geocart map in 1987.

1990s

Where petrol companies issued maps in the 1990s, they were mainly to help motorists with payment cards locate the company's participating service stations. Numbers of sites operated by the largest names were falling, so a pocket map - often printed on quite cheap glossy paper - could be a useful gift to cardholders.

All the maps are shown here at the same scale relative to the original maps!

The Fina and Shell maps above are straightforward glossy paper issues, dating from 1991 and 1996. Both mark filling stations and were prepared by CARTO at 1:350,000. Seca's map was sold through its service stations and is on tougher paper. de Rouck prepared it for the company in the late 1990s. The tiny 1999 Q8 map unfolds from a credit card size to a give a very basic map of Belgium by Cartografie de Schutter locating Q8 service stations. (A larger image of this map is on the Q8 page.) At the opposite extreme were four highly detailed street atlases covering all Belgian towns produced by Geocart for Burmah in the late 1990s after it had bought BP's smaller outlets. These were Burmah's first ever maps of the country.

2000s Source: Ministry of the Economy, SMEs and Energy

As in most other European countries, the consolidation of the 1990s quickened at the turn of the new century. Q8's market leadership (after it bought out the remaining BP assets and Aral) was short-lived as Total, Fina and Elf merged to form TotalFina, although in 2003 their name reverted to Total. Burmah's stations went to Octa+, and after 40 years the Seca name was finally replaced by Jet, although a few years later they were sold to Lukoil. Independent brands and free (unbranded) stations remained common compared to the rest of Europe, although new environmental legislation meant that over 10% of all sites closed in 2002 alone, leaving just 3,875 active petrol stations.

Esso

Avia

Octa+

All the maps above are on relatively poor quality glossy paper. The three small format maps are by Geocart-Claus at 1:525,000/600,000. TotalFina's was much the same as the Fina one produced a decade earlier, except that Total stations were now shown as well as Fina, Elrop and de Smet & van Diest locations, and the cartographer credited had become Carpress/Scargraphic. Shell had moved to Uitgerverij Lanoo whose map was at the slightly smaller scale of 1:400,000. Octa+, which also had some outlets under AVIA name, had recently acquired the Burmah chain, and in 2001 re-issued the Burmah street atlases under their new identity; it has continued to issue location maps from time to time.

There are many other Belgian map images on this site. Several can be found on the pages for Fina in Belgium, Esso Benelux, Gulf, Trading, and the pages for the Belgian independents of ARA and RBP and Octa+, OTA, Pollet and Power. Additional images can be seen on the BP, Caltex, Nafta, Seca and the Shell 1958-72 and 1996-2000 pages.