Plainfield Fuel Station Owner Inducted into Rt. 66 Hall of Fame

For more than a quarter century, motorists relied on Sam Reichert Sr.

“The face of Plainfield” operated fuel stations — mainly Standard Oil stations — along .

On June 9, his place in the history of “The Mother Road” was cemented as he was inducted into the Route 66 Hall of Fame in Pontiac, Illinois.

Aided by Plainfield historian and architect Michael Lambert, Sam Reichert Jr. nominated his dad for induction.

The younger Reichert said his father was chosen from a pool of 14 nominees for the honor.

“He’s in the museum now,” Sam Jr. said, adding a shelf is now filled with photos and Standard Oil memorabilia from his father’s days working along the highway.

“It’s really cool,” said Reichert Jr., who now serves as the highway commissioner.

For the Reicherts, working along Route 66 was a way of life.

“Some of the best times in my life were hanging out at this station and working,” Sam Jr. said of his father’s Standard Oil station at Lockport Street and Route 59. 

It was Route 66 that brought Sam Reichert Sr. to Plainfield in the first place. After recovering from wounds he suffered in combat during World War II, the elder Reichert took a job as a bus driver for Greyhound Lines, traveling between Chicago and St. Louis, Missouri.

“That’s how he got acquainted [with Plainfield]," Sam Reichert Jr. said. “He came here and started working and that’s where he met my mother.” Sam Sr. and Shirley Miller married in 1953.

In 1948, the elder Sam’s brother, Paul, became the operator of Plainfield’s new Standard Oil station. Two years later, Sam Sr. also made the move to Plainfield, taking a job at Walt Russell’s Standard Oil station, just three blocks from his brother’s business.

Eventually, Sam Reichert Sr. would become the owner of both.

“Dad bought [my uncle’s] station and took over Russell’s station,” Sam Jr. said.

The businessman also operated a Standard Oil station at Route 30 and I-55, today a Mobil station, along with a Texaco station directly across the street. Most recently, the Texaco site was occupied by a truck stop, which has also been demolished.

Sam Sr. also operated Sam’s Standard Service, located two miles southeast of his original downtown station, from 1965 to 1970.

In 1969, Reichert bought another station at Route 30 and Caton Farm Road.

“I worked for him until he retired,” Sam Reichert Jr. Said. “In ’79 or ’80, I bought my station in town,” located at the current site of .

The family has the distinction of operating fuel stations at the only spot  where Route 66 and the Lincoln Highway align.

“My dad and I operated the only three stations on the Lincoln Highway and Route 66,” Sam Reichert Jr. said. We as a family operated all of them at one time or another.”

In his nomination essay, Lambert had this to say:

Between father and son, the Reicherts are the sole people who can claim to have operated three service stations along the solitary, shared alignment of  historic U.S. Route 66 and the Lincoln Highway. In all, the Reicherts—Paul, Sam, Sr. and Sam, Jr.—operated seven service stations in the Plainfield, Illinois area over the course of a half century (1948 - 1997).

The elder Reichert passed away in 2004, but his memory will live on in Route 66 lore.

“It’s something that a guy who worked his whole life at something [is recognized],” Sam Reichert Jr. said.