IW business sets Guinness record
Published 9:39 pm Monday, October 7, 2013
![Glen and Mike Schlickenmeyer, owners of Smithfield Fast Lube, unveil what would turn out to be the Guinness World Record bottle of oil at their business in April.](https://www.suffolknewsherald.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2013/10/IMG_1121.jpg)
Glen and Mike Schlickenmeyer, owners of Smithfield Fast Lube, unveil what would turn out to be the Guinness World Record bottle of oil at their business in April.
A Smithfield automotive garage has struck it big after Guinness World Records recognized its 200-gallon bottle of oil as the world’s largest.
Glen Schlickenmeyer, co-owner of Smithfield Fast Lube with brother Mike, said official recognition came from the London, England-based organization at the end of September — and they’ve got the certificate to prove it.
“I think we’re going to be on the website pretty quickly,” Schlickenmeyer said — though the record isn’t listed there yet.
He also hopes the record will be in the next Guinness World Records book, due out in 100 countries in 20 languages in 2014.
The brothers started talking about establishing the new record about two years ago, Glen Schlickenmeyer said.
The giant bottle, modeled on a quart of Mobil 1 Synthetic 5W-30, was fashioned by Roy Smith Jr. and Marty Schriebl of Circle M Contracting Inc. in Portsmouth.
Schriebl is a Smithfield resident and customer of the lube shop. “They did a great job,” Schlickenmeyer said.
“It had to look exactly like the bottle. When it was unveiled, I was, like, ‘Wow, that’s good.’”
Sign Media of Hampton made the label, which Schlickenmeyer said captured the brand perfectly.
“It’s amazing what computers can do,” he said.
Schlickenmeyer said the Guinness World Records authentication process took about four months.
“It took a little while, but we were happy that we were successful,” he said.
The brothers undertook the project to highlight the importance of regular oil changes, which can lengthen the life of an engine dramatically.
“It was a lot of fun to do,” Glen Schlickenmeyer said. “It was something to make people aware of the need to maintain their cars.
“Cars are becoming kind of maintenance-free, but they are not totally maintenance-free. The key to keeping cars on the road is changing the oil.”
The brothers are also learning the marketing pull of a huge bottle of liquefied fossils. Through their Mobil supplier, Glen Schlickenmeyer said, several companies have already expressed interest in borrowing the bottle for promotional purposes
“I have agreed to let them borrow it,” he said. “It’s kind of big and bulky; you need a pickup truck to haul it around.”