John M. Arnold

Chief Executive Officer, PPC Lubricants
Board Member, Penn State Smeal College of Business Board of Visitors

John Arnold ’87 attended Grove City College and earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Business in 1985.  He attended Pennsylvania State University and earned his M.B.A. and graduated in 1987 with a degree in Finance.  John has also attended many of Harvard University’s executive education courses on strategy with Michael Porter.

At the time if its sale in April of 2015, John was the Chairman, C.E.O., and sole owner of Petroleum Products Corp., a $3 billion per year petroleum mid-stream company which owned refined petroleum pipeline terminals in the Northeast U.S.  Petroleum Products Corp.’s extremely large and technologically advanced 14 petroleum pipeline terminals, very dominantly distributed throughout a six-state marketing area for themselves and all the major oil companies, large convenience store chains, truck stops, and home heating oil companies in their region.  The company was very successfully sold in April 2015 to Boston based Arclight Capital.

At the time of its sale in September of 2021, John was Chairman, C.E.O., and owner of his other company, PPC Lubricants, Inc.  PPC Lubricants was the U.S.’s 5th largest distributor and the U.S.’s largest privately held distributor of commercial, industrial, and automotive lubricants, oil & gas drilling fluids, chemicals, and diesel exhaust fluid.  PPC Lubricants was named as Shell’s #1 lubricant distributor in North America in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.  PPC also had its own Drydene lubricant brand and was a NASCAR race team sponsor and NASCAR race sponsor.  In 2021, PPC Lubricants was sold to RelaDyne, Inc. the US's largest lubricant distribution company.