GREENFIELD — The Sandri family’s quest for the American dream took them from Italy, through Vermont and into Greenfield nearly a century ago.

Acilio Remo “A.R.” Sandri, the second son of immigrants Dominico and Anna, worked as a chief clerk at Pan-Am Oil, eventually leasing the Main Street gas station in January 1931. Sandri Energy now has nearly 500 employees as it celebrates its 90th anniversary.

“Sandri’s been an amazing company, straight through, from the time we started to today. We do a lot. We’re much larger than a lot of people think we are,” said CEO and board Chairman Timothy Van Epps, the husband of Sandri’s granddaughter, Wendy Van Epps. “We’re looked at as ‘the heating oil company.’ Not too many people know how big we’ve been able to grow over the last 90 years.”

Starting in March, the company plans to hold a raffle in honor of its anniversary, with $90 in value given away each week until December, when three grand prize winners will be drawn. People can take part in the raffle at sandri.com/giveaway, as well as on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“It’s the service that we give to our customers that sets ourselves apart,” Van Epps said. “I love the fact that our employees come to work every day with a goal of doing the right thing, servicing the customer. I’ve always been blown away at how many compliments, how many thank you letters I get from customers who I’ve never met.”

According to President and Chief Operating Officer Michael V. Behn, A.R. Sandri’s father was a talented stone carver who found work in Vermont. But, while carving was conducted outside in Italy, notoriously harsh winters made this impossible year-round in Barre, Vt. Working in unvented buildings resulted in silicosis, a lung disease that proved fatal during the so-called Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. When A.R. was 17, Anna moved her family to Greenfield, where relatives worked in the monument engraving industry, which Wendy said was similar but safer work.

“I think one of the unique things is, when my grandfather first came to town he apprenticed as a bookkeeper for a local insurance company and real estate company, so he kind of cut his teething understanding the local real estate market,” Wendy explained, “and when he finally went to work for Pan-Am Oil, he was able to recognize a lot of those bargain service station opportunities.”

Tim said it took A.R. a month to get the keys to the building, so he sat outside in the freezing temperatures to sell gas.

According to Behn, A.R. had grown his company to six stations and became a distributor for Cities Service Gasoline in Franklin County by 1945. He continued to add stations over the next decade while expanding the business into the residential heating oil, commercial fuel and farm gasoline markets. By 1962, Behn said, Sandri was selling nearly 5 million gallons of gasoline a year and by 1965 the company had accumulated 26 stations. That same year he signed an agreement with Sun Oil Company (Sunoco) to convert his stations to Sunoco outlets.

“He kind of becomes a poster child for Sunoco,” Behn said, adding that A.R. was used in Sunoco’s national advertising.

In 1976, the company jumped at the opportunity to acquire all of Sunoco’s real estate holdings in Vermont and western New Hampshire, and keep them as Sunoco sites.

“It was a major deal back then. In fact, that’s when they acquired me,” Behn said. “I was working for Sunoco at the time and came over, and it was probably the best move of my life. So we then became the largest Sunoco distributor in the United States. And we were really hopping at that point. We got exclusive rights to extend the Sunoco brand (in Vermont and Western Massachusetts), which no one ever had before.

“The next five years was just rapid growth with Sunoco,” Behn said.

In the 1980s, Sandri got into Clean Burn waste oil furnaces, which Behn said “was a nice add-on to our HVAC business and ... our heating oil business.”

A.R.’s son, William, an avid golfer, acquired the Crumpin-Fox golf club in Bernardston in 1987 and later The Inn at Crumpin-Fox. He died in 2012.

All the service stations were converted into convenience stores in the 1990s, and Tim Van Epps came aboard in 2005 “as basically male heir apparent to the Sandri dynasty, if you will,” Behn said with a smile.

“He hit the company with enough energy that we took off even further at this point,” Behn said, adding that Van Epps was crucial in acquiring Mid-State Clean Burn in New York, making Sandri the largest Clean Burn distributor in the United States and Canada. In 2008, the same year that A.R. died, Van Epps partnered with Sunoco and the Price Chopper supermarket chain in one of the first rollouts of a grocery store loyalty program for gasoline discounts accrued through grocery purchases. Behn said there are now 65 of these gas stations.

Van Epps also helped secure a $3.2 million state grant to bring wood pellet energy into Western Massachusetts, installing high-tech boilers at Greenfield Community College, the local fire station, Stoneleigh-Burnham School and other institutions.

Sandri briefly dabbled in solar energy and in 2013 entered the propane business. Behn said propane is the company’s fast-growing division, with about 300 percent growth since it started. Sandri acquired Tognarelli Heating & Cooling in 2017 and Facey Plumbing and Heating the following year.

Behn also noted that Sandri has been a sponsor of Big Brothers Big Sisters for 40 years and has contributed about $1.5 million to the Franklin County chapter. Van Epps added that the company has participated in every capital campaign at Baystate Franklin Medical Center and GCC.

“The community’s good to us,” Behn said. “So, you have to give back. You know, that’s the way we feel about it.”

Sandri survived the economic turmoil of the Great Depression and defied the odds that often plague family businesses. According to Wendy, 93 percent of third-generation family businesses fail; that figure is 72 percent for second-generation companies.

“(A.R.) survived with grit,” Van Epps said. “He worked his tail off. He would sit outside pumping gas in the freezing cold when he didn’t have keys to the building. Just one of the hardest-working human beings you would have ever met in your life.”

“He came into the office almost every day until he was like 98,” Wendy Van Epps said, “until he was physically just unable to come in.”

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.

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