Fort Smith native Malynda K. Atwood West joined Murphy Oil Corp. in 1996 and held various positions in finance, human resources and planning. When the Murphy USA retail division was spun off as a stand-alone publicly traded company in 2013, she was its executive vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer. She was named leader of the fuels division in 2017 and was made chief operating officer in 2024. She was named president in October, when it was announced that she would succeed Andrew Clyde as CEO on Jan. 1.
West earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and added a degree in accounting from Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia.
West joined Murphy Oil Corp. in 1996, the same year it opened its first retail gas station, the foundation of the Murphy USA spin-off in 2013.
Tell us about your career trajectory and the experiences that best prepared you to be CEO of Murphy USA. Was being CEO always your ambition?
I’m from Arkansas, born and raised in Fort Smith. I went to school at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and then moved down here with my husband, and was fortunate to get a job at Murphy Oil. I started in accounting and then did a brief stint in HR before moving to strategy and planning, where I got to use the finance side of my background, and not so much the accounting side. I worked in investor relations for a period of time, and then was vice president and treasurer at the time of the spin-off.
If you had asked me growing up, would I be CEO, I probably would have said, “Of course! I’m an only child! I can do anything!” But, I mean, I’m Mindy from Fort Smith. I never really planned on being CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I just always tried to do the best job and make the most of whatever role I was in. And I’ve been really fortunate, both with my time with Murphy Oil and Murphy USA, to get an exposure to a variety of things. I had a chance to work with [CEO] Andrew [Clyde] to help shape Murphy USA. That was hugely exciting for me. And I’ve just made it a point to learn every step of the way.
Becoming a CFO was something I always did aspire to. Andrew gave me exposure to the commercial side of the business and the operation side by having me run our fuels organization, and I really enjoyed that part. And that’s what really then led me into this track of being CEO versus CFO. So CFO is something I always aspired to — CEO, not really until just recently.
How do you create a corporate culture when you have a couple of thousand different locations where employees are representing Murphy USA?
Our leadership team over operations is very close to their stores, very close to the customers. We have long had this upselling culture. We recognize our store associates when they execute a promotion. They get incentives from a commission standpoint; they get recognition every year. We bring all of our store managers together with leadership to begin the year. We have presentations, we have workshops and we have a lot of fun while doing that. And so just that touchpoint with everybody once a year I think really serves to ground us in the culture. And then also touchpoints throughout the year. The field staff is really boots on the ground, working side by side with our station employees.
Are you developing and promoting management talent from the bottom level?
We source a lot of talent from the field into the home office. Sometimes that results in larger roles within the home office. Sometimes that also results in them learning a lot and gaining perspective from the back office, and then they go back out in the field with a lot better understanding of the whole business.
I can tell you, the guy that runs our merchandising business came from the field. The guy that runs our fuels business also came from the field. So there are a lot of instances of people moving to the home office and taking on bigger and bigger roles and having great success doing that. And it’s important too, because they stay grounded. They understand that we have to be careful what we’re asking the stores to do. They understand if they can’t possibly execute because we can’t have the product in stock, and they don’t have time. They understand the trade-offs that need to be made.
How is selling gasoline similar to and different from other kinds of retail sales?
Like with any retail product, you’ve got to give your customers convenience, quality, value, great customer service. There are many differences, especially when you’re talking about fuel. Fuel is a necessity, right? So when money is tight, you cut back on other things, but you still have to get your kids to school. You still have to drive to work, so it’s a nondiscretionary type purchase. It’s also a commodity, so people are going to go where they can get at the cheapest, and that happens to be our sweet spot.
But fuel has a lot of safety and regulatory requirements that if you sell books or clothing you don’t have to deal with. So there’s a complexity there and a risk there that other products don’t have.
The fuels market itself is very complex. We’re shipping on major pipelines, contracting with carriers to deliver the product to every one of our stores who need a load a day. So it’s a high-velocity business, very complex. Fuel also has a low product profit margin compared to most other retail products, because it is a commodity and the price is volatile and can change daily. So in a department store, you’re not going to change your prices that often. We change our prices every day, sometimes maybe more than once a day if we need to.
One of the most notable differences is other retailers will talk in terms of their revenue. We never do that, and it’s because the fuel price is set by the market, and whether the price is $3 or $2 is going to make a big impact on our revenue, but has nothing to do with how well we’ve executed. So we only talk about margin, because that is the portion that we can control.
Are electric vehicles part of Murphy USA’s future?
You know, we spend a lot of time looking ahead, trying to make sure that we’re giving our customers what they want and what they need, both now and in the future. But it’s really just not our customer. Our customer is a value customer and doesn’t drive an electric car. That’s not even aspirational for them.
So we’re bullish on fuel to our customers for 2030 and well beyond that. Other retailers are going to feel that impact long before we do. When you think about the states where the adoption of electric vehicles has been the highest, states like California, we’re not in California and have no intention of being in California. But we’re still taking action and doing things for the future, regardless of what that fuel is. So we’re expanding and improving our offerings. We’re expanding our digital capabilities, our loyalty program. Longer term, we see opportunity inside the store. We’ll be positioned to capture that, but I think our customer is going to drive an internal combustion engine for a long time.
Do you see anything for Murphy USA in the Buc-ee’s hype?
Buc-ee’s is like the superstore of convenience — and I’m a huge Buc-ee’s fan, by the way — but that is a completely different offer, different shopping occasion, different customer. That customer is going in and probably spending well over $100 every time they go in, probably closer to $200. It’s just a different customer on vacation, traveling long distances to and from. A great thing about the convenience store business is there are so many different models out there and people doing things completely different, but there’s room for all of us to do really well.
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