Winter is coming... Is your generator ready?

Winter, as we all know, will soon be bringing dark & stormy weather.

The southern region of the country is still recovering from a very active hurricane season.  Huge areas were knocked out of power for days.  Following the tragic heat caused death of eight patients of a Florida nursing home, the Florida legislature enacted an emergency law requiring all nursing & medical facilities to maintain a 96 hour supply of backup power.  This means, all of those facilities must have standby generators capable of providing emergency power for four days.  We have provided dozens of refuelers to these facilities, so they may remain in compliance.

We also sent almost 80 mobile refuelers to Puerto Rico for their storm disaster recovery. These will be used to rebuild infrastructure, particularly communications & public utilities.

It becomes ever so clear, that "prevention" is much harder to sell than "cure".  

Had the nursing home in Florida prepared adequately, tragic loss of life may have been averted.  If the utility companies in Puerto Rico had planned ahead, they could have recovered from the hurricanes far more quickly.  It's always easier to realize you've got a problem or weakness after the fact.  Preparing & planning ahead, vastly reduces the chance of disaster becoming a far worse event for your community.

Which brings us back around to winter...
This year, there will undoubtedly be thousands of people left in the dark due to weather related power outages. Some only briefly, some for longer periods of time.

In the massive Northeast power outage several years ago, over 55% of standby generators failed to start. The primary cause?  Stale, old fuel. Bio-growth in tanks. Clogged fuel filters.
too many companies, public agencies, etc., had simply let their generators sit with little to no maintenance.  Take this as your cue to go try and start your backup generator.  Run it for at least a half hour, under load if possible. Do this now, BEFORE you need to rely on it to provide emergency power.

You'll also want to consider how much run time your generator can provide.  When the fuel tank runs dry, no more power...  You don't want to count on fuel suppliers to come out during a power outage, at least not anytime soon...

This is when you realize that a TransFueler might be a very good thing to buy. Refuel your generators when you need to.  24/7, every day of the year, including weekends & holidays..

We recently sold 14 TransFueler 1000 gallon fuel trailers to a major grocery store chain. One for each of their regional warehouses. Before, they were limited to a few hours of generator run time. Now, they can refuel their standby generators for several days in case of an extended power failure.

That's the kind of forward thinking that will keep them up & running...

Interested in keeping your backup power generators running & supplying power? Call us, we'll build a TransFueler for you.

Made In America. Does it matter?

Since we started this company over 10 years ago, we've been proponents of having everything made in America.

We believe in supporting our fellow American workers first.  Granted, this is one planet we all live on.  We do not mean that our brothers & sisters in other countries are inferior, or less able to build our products.  We simply believe that improving our world begins at home. In our case, that translates to creating as many jobs here in America as possible.

We all know that so many of the products we buy & use are made in China, Vietnam, etc. We've all had those interesting tech phone calls with outsourced agents in India. Pretty much all those foreign workers are doing their best to make an honest living & support their families. 

We just differ, in that our company thinks it's smarter to keep our fellow Americans working, before we hand off jobs to another nation's workers.  Could we make more money by outsourcing & offshoring our products? Most likely we could.  Instead we prefer to employ as many Americans (and those who have the legal right to work here...) as we can.

We don't spend a lot of time thinking about TPP, NAFTA, and the myriad of other government trade policies. We think constantly about how to provide a better refueler to our customers, at a fair price. 

I, the primary owner of this company, don't think it's smart to get into political arguments in the context of business. Surely, I'll offend both those on the left, as well as those on the right.  I do want it to be clear though; we strive to be an excellent American company.

Ed Dunn