The first story starts in a hog barn in Gleason, tucked away from anyplace that sells truck parts

“It was our veterinarian who got us into it,” says Paul Godwin, whose sturdy Tennessee accent rolls along like the land he once farmed.

“We were sitting up at the hog farm one day, and he said, ‘You’re farming and you’re raising hogs. You’re sitting on a two-legged stool, and that stool can fall forward or backward. If you was sittin’ on a three-legged stool, it’d be pretty hard to knock you off of it.’ I said,

‘What do I need to get into?’ and he said, ‘I don’t know. Get into something that doesn’t pertain to farming.’”

And so began an adventure that today keeps Paul, his wife Linda, and his son Martin busy at all hours of the day – and night.

The hogs were toast, well, ham, more than 10 years ago, and the fields are now plowed by someone else. The third leg of that metaphorical stool is now a profitable mom-and-pop leasing operation with three business legs of its own: expediting, full-load freight, and truck maintenance.

Godwin Leasing keeps their own 17 trucks on the road across the Southeast, Midwest and beyond. They also handle up to 30 or 40 loads a day for 12 other carriers.

Curing the Oil Burning Blues

“If you have a bank, a post office and a service station, what else do you need?” Paul is showing off his hometown of Gleason (pop.1100), and the only trouble is that the service station isn’t a Shell station.

Which is why the Godwins used to rely on a competitor’s oil for their cars and their first truck, a Bullet International with a V6 92 Detroit Diesel engine.

“We were running this other oil in it,” says Martin, “and it was using oil, and a friend said, ‘Get some ROTELLA and put it in, and it will stop using oil.’ Well, we put it in, and it stopped.” But that was only the beginning.

“Our first semi was a used truck with 460,000 miles on it,” says Paul. “The guy who sold it used the other oil, and he told us, ‘It uses a gallon of oil every 5000 miles. When it needs the second gallon, I change the oil.’ We just switched to ROTELLA,” Paul continues. “They tell you, ‘Don’t switch oil,’ but we did. And I sent two gallons of oil along with the truck.

“I’d always figured that when a gas engine hits 100,000 miles, it’s junk!” -Paul Godwin

That truck comes back in, and the same two gallons of oil are still sitting in there. Then 10,000 miles comes, time for the oil change, I check the truck, and there’s still two gallons of oil. That truck never burned oil again.”

Paul reports they sold the old Freightliner in 1998 with 1,089,000 miles. “I talked to the boy who bought it two weeks ago,” Paul says, “and the motor has still never been touched. I don’t know how many miles it’s got on it now.” Well, you say, what’s new about a ROTELLA diesel miracle? How about a ROTELLA T gasoline miracle?

433,000 Miles On a Gasoline Engine . . .

“I’d always figured that when a gas engine hits 100,000 miles, it’s junk!” Paul says. That was then. This is now: The Godwins still run a gasoline-powered Ford 351 panel van with 433,000 miles on it and still counting. It hums along on ROTELLA® T and sounds like a new vehicle.

“This van still doesn’t use oil,” Paul says. “The oil pan has never been off of it, and the motor has never been touched.” And that’s in spite of some pretty rough service – as Martin says emphatically, “This van hasn’t had any mercy put on it. It’s had 30 or 40 drivers, and the more miles they can turn, the more money they make . . . it’s just pedal to the floor.” Even Ford never expected their vehicle to last this long.

“Anything we buy, we put Shell ROTELLA T in it. We run it in the garden tiller, the lawn mower, the four-wheeler, whatever. We just have one oil." -Martin Godwin

“The odometer is digital,” Martin Godwin explains, “and when it got to 399,999 miles, it rolled back to 300,000! I called the Ford dealership where we bought the truck, and they couldn’t find out anything from Ford.

So I called Ford myself, and the person I talked to said, ‘That digit is not supposed to go to 4 – we only put 3 digits in the computer because we figured 300,000 is probably more than that engine is ever going to get.’

I said, ‘Well I’ve got one that’s rolled over to 4, and I’ve got the maintenance records to prove it.’”

Same Song, 17th Verse

This van is far from unusual at Godwin Leasing. Another Ford 351 had ticked off 310,000 miles before it was totaled in 1998, and the van bought to replace it already has 206,000 miles.

Then there are two Nissan pickups with more than 160,000 and 130,000 miles, a Dodge pickup with 306,000 miles, a Dodge 3500 Cummins Turbo Diesel with up to about 450,000 miles (the odometer reads 350,000, but it wasn’t working for a while), two Dodge one-ton flatbed trucks with the little 5.9 Cummins diesel engine and more than 400,000 miles apiece (sold recently for larger trucks), and Martin’s Suburban, with more than 90,000 miles.

There are also some newer trucks, including four tractor-trailer rigs, that are busy racking up anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 miles a year, all on Shell ROTELLA T 15W-40.

“Anything we buy, we put Shell ROTELLA T in it,”says Martin. “We run it in the garden tiller, the lawn mower, the four-wheeler, whatever. We just have one oil.

“We change the oil in our semis at 10,000 miles, and in our gas vehicles at 8,000 miles,” Martin continues. “We want to get as much life out of each vehicle as we can get.

We have our trucks forever. Shell wanted to look inside the engine of our van, but we need all the vehicles we have.