The Unsung Heroes of Propane

There’s a kind of hero this industry doesn’t put on the cover often enough.

There’s a service tech whose phone goes off at 2 a.m. on a Sunday in January — a family with a newborn, no heat, twelve degrees outside — and they’re out of bed and into the truck before the coffee’s even on. There’s a delivery driver who takes the hill in the ice because the alternative is somebody’s furnace running dry. There’s the one who spent Thanksgiving under a tank instead of at the table, because “out of gas” doesn’t wait for the holiday to be over.

You know this person. They might work for you. It might be you.

Sweating through a shirt in August, dragging hose across a hundred yards of hot gravel. Freezing hands raw in February doing the exact same job in a wind that cuts. Reading the pressure, checking the regulator, catching the leak before it’s a problem — because on propane, getting it wrong isn’t an option. It’s the dirty, cold, physical, dangerous version of “customer service,” the version that doesn’t happen in an inbox.

Nobody hands them an award for it. There’s no ribbon for a call-out at midnight. The customer says thank you, sometimes, and they’re already back in the truck heading to the next one. Then they do it again the next night, and the one after that, for twenty, thirty, forty years.

That’s who this series is about — every tech, every driver, every plant hand and dispatcher who’s ever gone out in weather nobody else would drive in. Men and women both. If you do this work, this is your record.

We’re the Propane Insider — we’ve spent our lives on the operator side of this business, and we know exactly what the job costs a body and a family. So we’re going to do something about the fact that the people who do it never get their name in print. Every month, we’re going to tell one of their stories. The tech. The driver. The plant hand. The dispatcher who talks a scared customer through shutting off a valve at 3 a.m. The names your company runs on and the industry never hears.

Here’s where you come in. Who’s yours? The one who’s been out in every storm for thirty years. The one who trained half your crew. The one who retired last spring and left a hole you still haven’t filled. Send us their name and a way to reach them, and we’ll do the rest — reach out, hear the story, and put it where the whole industry can see it.

Because the people out in the cold keeping customers warm have earned more than a thank-you at the door. They’ve earned the record.

[CTA — nominate your unsung hero at propaneinsider.com]

— Bill Stomp, Propane Insider