Big Meadow sets pace

By BRAD DICKERSON
Glasgow Daily Times

GLASGOW May 07, 2008 06:14 pm

— Betty Gentry and Sheila Pruitt’s joint business venture, Big Meadow Oil, certainly evolved beyond its founders’ original goal.
The co-owners, who opened the operation in Knob Lick in 1981, originally they wanted to run a grocery and farm supply store to service their rural customers.
“She was going to work one day and I was going to work the next,” Gentry said. “This is how small it started. We definitely did not plan it. It evolved.”
After being approached by a company to put in a bulk tank, Gentry and Pruitt were in the oil business — a male-dominated business — and attending classes and seminars whenever they got the chance.
“We just didn’t know that much about the business when we first started and we would be the only women in the room,” Pruitt said.
Both women have since learned a lot and are now the heads of a company of 10 employees that sells and distributes more than $10 million in fuel and oil annually to operations in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.
Gentry said their certification as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) in 1989 by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet helped make the company “jump.”
“A lot of the road jobs that are done, they are needing to meet a goal of women and minorities,” she said. “If it’s a state or federal job, we’ve usually got some of that job because we are a disadvantaged business.”
Recently, Big Meadow Oil was included in the inaugural class of 12 for the state’s Pacesetter Business Recognition Program.
In looking ahead to the future, Pruitt and Gentry are hopeful that some of their children may one day decide to come and take their mothers’ places in the business. They might have to wait a while longer.
“We really don’t have anybody that’s interested,” Gentry said.

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