Advocacy, Leadership & Education for Maine's Energy Marketers Www
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Advocacy, Leadership & Education for Maine’s Energy Marketers Fuel Your www.maineenergymarketers.com LOVE 1 MEMA MAG | Spring 2020 Page 16 2 MEMA MAG | Spring 2020 Contents spring 2020 • volume 3 issue 1 MEMA Member Info 5 MEMA Team Members & Officers of the Board 14 6 Police, Fire, & the Oil Man Who you gonna call? 7 MEMA staff message Thank you everyone 8 MEMA Committees & Trusts Join a committee 11 The Future is Now Maine Standard Biofuels 13 Favorite moments of 2019 6 An eventful year for MEMA 14 Eastern Propane & Oil Good deeds done 16 Fuel Your Love 22 5th Annual event huge success 20 Certified Employee Training MTEC’s new training program 21 Tech Corner Proper tank setting 22 The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly Three sides of the Transportation Initiative 28 16 24 Insurance Corner A health insurance check-up MEMA MAG is a quarterly magazine designed to engage and communicate with members with useful, timely, and member related content. MEMA MAG 26 New Members will be published four times each year by MARS Marketing LLC. Welcome to the family Do you have a suggestion for MEMA MAG? Would you like to ADVERTISE OR SUBSCRIBE? Contact Hannah Estes, Business Manager at MEMA. Email 28 Q&A with Charlie Burnham her at [email protected] or call 207-729-5298. The state of the industry Copyright ©2020 MARS Marketing LLC & Maine Energy Marketers Association. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, 30 MTEC 2020 Class Schedule electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval Top-notch classes for the HVAC industry system, without permission, in writing, from the publisher. Printed in Lewiston, ME, USA. www.maineenergymarketers.com 3 4 MEMA MAG | Spring 2020 Our Team Jamie Py Hannah Estes Sarah Nadeau Robin Manson Matt Morrison Bryan Champagne Dan Weber Jennifer Grace President & CEO Business Manager Administrative Insurance Vice President MTEC Senior MTEC Instructor Director of Marketing & Assistant Administrator Instructor Communication OUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS Mike McCormack Charlie Burnham Claudette Townsend Downeast Energy Burnham Energy Dead River Company Chairman of the Board Vice Chair Treasurer Executive Board Mark St. Germain ~ St. Germain Tom Schwarm ~ Gould Technologies Rob Cort ~ Maine Energy Inc. Robert Luce ~ Valley Gas & Oil Company William Beck ~ Gulf Oil, LP Michael McCormack ~ Downeast Energy Saunya Urban ~ H.A. Mapes Inc. - Alt Claudette Townsend ~ Dead River Company Tim Heutz ~ Heutz Commercial Enterprise Marc LaCasse ~ Augusta Fuel Company Association Board Carrie Tomforde ~ Irving Oil Jamie Robinson ~ A.E. Robinson Oil Co. Katrina Waite ~ C.N. Brown Co., Inc. Steve Flewelling ~ Irving Oil - Alt David Babcock ~ Adams & Fogg Oil Equip. Charlie Burnham ~ Charlie Burnham Energy Jim Carroll ~ J.P. Carroll Fuel Co. Robert Shibley ~ Bob’s Cash Fuel LLC Matt Poole ~ Colby & Gale Steve Ness ~ Ness Oil Company Peter Buotte ~ Community Energy Company Roger Arsenault ~ Community Energy Robert Tracy ~ R.H. Foster Energy, LLC Carter Vaillancourt ~ Daigle Oil Company Michael Estes ~ Estes Oil & Propane Jeff Murdy ~ Renewable Energy Group Deanna Sherman ~ Dead River Max Marston ~ Fabian Oil Elwin Scott ~ Simard & Sons, Inc. Greg Krise ~ Eastern Propane & Oil, Inc. Jonathan Mapes ~ H.A. Mapes Inc. Marc Dorsey ~ Sprague Energy Jim Pike ~ Energy Kinetics Charlie Page ~ Maritime Energy Michael Tammaro ~ V.L. Tammaro Oil Co. Judy Delaney ~ Global Petroleum Corp Mark Gagnon ~ P. Gagnon & Sons Inc. Get Your Business Noticed! ADVERTISE IN MEMA MAG v Bepartoftheindustry’sleadingauthorityontoday’senergymarket v DirectlymailedtoALLmembersquarterly v State-of-the-arttrainingfacilityforcurrentemployeesandfuture employees Join us Today! FMI:ContactJenniferGraceat207-729-5298oremail:[email protected] www.maineenergymarketers.com 5 POLICE, FIRE, & THE OIL MAN By Barry Aruda he question, “Who you gonna call?” was popularized in the that they’ve lost their heat and have an added expense, and the dealer 1980’s with the success of the Ghostbusters movie franchise. isn’t thrilled they’ve got to play the liability game with someone on the TEach of us were told to make the call if there was “something road. Never mind the technician that needs to get out of bed and into a strange in the neighborhood,” and Drs. Spengler, Stantz, and Venkman cold truck with his tools. would show up minutes later, all in the name of busting ghouls. Service on demand, just the way we like it. The advice I typically provide dealers begins with a question: What if I could minimize that pain for you? Of course, they answer, “I’d love it.” Fortunately for us, things like spirits and specters aren’t a reality. What is reality, however, is that emergencies can strike at any moment, in any For more than two-decades, Advanced Fuel Solutions has had the of our lives. When issues arise in the middle of the night or on week- privilege and unique experience of assisting fuel dealers 24/7 with fuel ends, there really are only three groups of dedicated people that we can quality and storage related issues that precede those anxiety riddled no- source: Police, Fire, and the local heating oil dealer. heat service calls. Our market-leading fuel conditioner for heating oil is a non-stop workhorse that protects fuel and keeps it fresh—stabilizing Really! Think about it. Who else is going to trek out in the freezing today’s ULSHO/biodiesel blends and the highly anticipated higher twilight to help the homeowner? The police will thwart an attempted blends of tomorrow. burglary. The fire department will respond to a blaze. And the oil man will come when you call, providing you with heat when you’ve run out, “It’s preemptive maintenance,” one of my customers told me. “It’s peace or when the burner won’t kick on. That’s it. No electricians or plumbers of mind, knowing I’m ensuring customer satisfaction, while improving need apply! work/life balance for my technicians.” Do me a favor, next time you meet one of your association members That’s what makes my day. One, we’re helping to protect the integrity of check on technician availability. I believe you will see a pattern. What the fuel we service. Better fuel makes for happier customers, and happier I notice is job openings are at a premium. Could be a signal of company customers are more likely to use today’s better, safer and cleaner fuel as growth but could also be a red flag. Talking to dealers all the time, I hear a heating source for years to come. Second, we are protecting the health it. The industry is speaking—complaining about the same thing—from and safety of the technicians that dealers lean upon to get the job done. New England to the Mid-Atlantic and everywhere in between! The less they are dispatched in terrible weather or the dark of night, the greater the impact on potential OSHA mishaps. We can all agree that heating oil dealers are an integral part of our communities—someone our families can rely on—but we also agree Technicians can’t be there all the time to fight against issues like mois- that fewer and fewer men and women are going into the business of ture and bacterial contamination in tanks. But preventative mainte- becoming technicians. Trade school attendance may be up over the last nance and proper storage protocols can, and will work. half-decade, but the fact is fact. The job market is hungry for able-bod- ied people to service oil burner equipment. It’s a battle that many Think about what goes into your fuel. If the answer is “nothing,” it dealers are fighting. Good help is hard to find. might be time to think about preventative maintenance strategies and a stabilization package. The ghostly job market is affecting us all, you’re QUESTION: How does a fuel dealer comple- not alone. Together we can shore up your fuel quality defenses! ment the technical skills offered the customer? Are you ready to believe? As fuel quality professionals, the Advanced Fuel Solutions (AFS) team Barry Aruda is the Northeast Regional Manager for Advanced Fuel Solu- offers our expertise to those dealers in a handful of ways, including stor- tions. As an admitted “fuel quality fanatic,” he spends a great deal of his age and tank housekeeping protocols, fuel enhancement programs and, full-time job testing fuel for analysis, recommending preventative defensive bankable field proven marketing strategies. Sure, if I know someone is strategies, and working with dealers to overcome the challenges of housekeep- looking for a rewarding and secure job, I’ll send them your way, but more ing and changing technology. often, I have to try and help my customers overcome the challenges of, first, finding someone qualified, and willing to go out in the middle of the night on overtime pay. Most recently I received a call from a customer who lost a technician because the overtime pay didn’t balance with the intrusion of lost family time. And on the other side of the equation, the customer isn’t happy 6 MEMA MAG | Spring 2020 MEMA Staff Message Message From the Staff: effort to keep MEMA strong into the future. Before you delve into the first issue of 2020, a big thank you to certain individuals who stepped in to help create unique content for Lastly, as you know this edition of the MEMA Mag. Thank you to Sean from NEFI for we love the MEMA writing a featured article for us about the TCI Tax. This is a topic Mag and we hope that is important to many of our members right now and we felt that it offers valuable strongly that it needed to be addressed.