Propane marketers talk safety and training initiatives

Propane marketers who attended the 2023 LP Gas Growth Summit provided these comments about safety and training initiatives in video interviews.

QUESTION: What are the steps your company has taken to ensure the safety of both employees and customers?

Shafer

ANSWERS:

“We use the CETP program for all of our driver training, CSR [and] service techs. Our industry has good safety principles, practices, training courses. We use all of that. On the customer side, we integrated a company that we’re using now for all of our gas checks, digital files, digital reporting, duty to warn. Also automating a lot of that and getting more digital.”
– Dustin Shafer, Phelan Gas, California

O’Brien

“We take safety very seriously. We’ve implemented a very robust safety initiative throughout the company where we incentivize our employees to get CETP trained through wage incentives. So for every certification, they get a certain percentage of a wage increase. Along with that, we offer our customers multiple different informational things through our website mailings. We put on local and community safety events through fire departments. We work closely with the state patrol on incidences, and how to handle those with propane. So we’re very actively involved in all of the communities that we do business with in terms of safety.”
– DeWayne O’Brien, Energy Partners, Montana

Wilford

“As far as employees go, it’s mostly about keeping up with training and drills. Anytime we have a new customer, we obviously go out and check out the system, but then we spend usually about 20 to 30 minutes after that going over the system with the customer, making sure they know how to shut the system down if they need to, know who to call and what not to do. Go over the basics of propane so they know it’s heavier than air [so] it’ll be at the bottom – make sure everyone’s pretty well up to date.”
– Kyle Wilford, Wilford Propane Gas, Florida

Tufts

“We’ve implemented a new training program for all our fill stations. I put the whole system online so that people can go on our website and do it. Then we send people out to back that up with hands-on training after they’ve already taken all the written portions. With the employees, it’s the regular safety meetings, going through our policies. I try not to do the textbook standard fare. I want to really go in-depth into the safety policy and talk about it and why.”
– Jeffrey Tufts, Devaney Energy, Massachusetts

Find out how to apply to the LP Gas Growth Summit.