This is the comparison a household in New Hampshire or western Maine is actually making, because in much of that territory these are two of the small number of companies that will come out to you at all.
Side by side
| Dead River Company | Rymes Propane and Oils | |
|---|---|---|
| Publishes a rate | No | No |
| How you get a price | Quote by postcode through a local office | Quote by town |
| Territory | Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, through a network of local offices. | New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and parts of Massachusetts. |
| Plan types | Will-call, Automatic delivery, Budget payment, Prepay, Capped price | Will-call, Automatic delivery, Budget plan, Pre-buy, Capped price |
| Delivery minimum | Set locally by office. Confirm before enrolling. | Not published. Confirm at order. |
| Ownership | Privately held, headquartered in South Portland, Maine. | Privately held, headquartered in Concord, New Hampshire. |
| Register position | Registered in Maine. The Governor Energy Office runs the state fuel price survey separately from any register. | New Hampshire publishes no heating oil dealer register. The state Department of Energy runs a price survey instead. |
| Checked | 10 September 2026 | 10 September 2026 |
Where the choice is decided
Both run the same family of plans: will-call, automatic, a budget payment arrangement, a prepaid option and a capped price. The names differ. The structures do not differ much, which means the comparison is about terms rather than product type.
Price protection enrollment windows are the thing to diarize. They open before the season and they close, and a household that misses the window has no capped plan for that winter regardless of what it would have paid. Ask both for the window dates in the spring, not in October.
Delivery minimums at both are set locally rather than published centrally, which is a genuine finding rather than an omission. It also means the answer for your town is not the answer three towns over, and the only way to get it is to ask your own local office.
No company on this page has paid for placement, reviewed the text or been contacted about it. This site sells no oil and runs no lead form.
Primary sources for this page
- Dead River Company public siteRead on 10 September 2026.
- Rymes Propane and Oils public siteRead on 10 September 2026.
- SEC EDGAR company filingsStar Group LP is CIK 0001002590. Global Partners LP is CIK 0001323468. Figures on this site are pulled from the XBRL company facts API rather than retyped from a press release.
- EIA State Heating Oil and Propane ProgramWeekly residential delivered price of No. 2 heating oil, national and by state. Collected October to March. The survey pauses after the last March print and resumes in October, which is why every federal page shows March data all summer.