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How Spill Response Turns A Tow Call Into A Second Business · Towing News Now

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome to Five Cost.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_05: A Five Catholics.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_05: New stories that affect the sewing industry and a weekly spotlight on sewing supplies and equipment.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_05: We have two hosts.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_05: One of them has been in the business for 40 years.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_05: The other has charming life of many years, who also is the general manager of product supply.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_05: No other than Wes and April Wilburn.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_05: Wes and April, I turn it over to you.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_10: DJ, as always, I appreciate your kind words.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_10: Uh definitely appreciate everything you've done to help the podcast here.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_10: Of course, my name is Wes Wilburn, one of your hosts.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_10: Um glad to have all the listeners that are listening to us.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_10: We're growing every week, still over 20,000 subscribers.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_10: So make sure you hit that subscribe and that like button.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_10: I'm here with my co-host and my wife, the lovely April Wilburn.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_10: April, how are you today?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_07: I am fantastic.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_07: I am fantastic.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_07: Uh it's July and uh North Carolina, so here we are with the heat, but it's not quite as oppressive.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_07: But we have been busy and um me and the husband have been super, super busy.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, it's amazing how things go sometimes.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_10: Uh we introduced an electronic parking brake release tool for heavy trucks, probably I don't know, it was before the new year.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_10: And I w realized there was a need for it, made made up a product to s to solve the problem.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_10: It has to do with a new electronic parking brake on for tractor trailers on Volvo's right now.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_10: And all of a sudden within the last week there's been a real call for them and we've been we're running at full capacity and can't keep up with getting getting the product out the door right now.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_10: So that's always a good problem to have.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that's a very good problem to have.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_10: I do want to warn all my heavy duty towing friends when you get a mess with these electronic parking brakes, once you charge air to them with a tool, you know, like our tool, immediately everything is released.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_10: There it's total free oil, there's nothing holding it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_10: So it's a situation that you have to be make sure you got a good hold of the vehicle, got the wheels trapped, etc.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_10: So anyway, we've been real busy with that.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_10: Um, and I'm uh kind of out of order here.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_10: We should have introduced our guest hook host as well.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_10: Um we have a guest host, returning friend of the podcast, and and my friend as well, Perry Beatty, Hazmat Responder Network.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_10: Perry, introduce yourself to Luke.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_06: All right, Perry Beatty.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_06: As we have said, Hazmat Responder Network, uh as well as Flow Stock Hazmat products.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_06: And uh I'm also in North Carolina, been experiencing hot weather, but we're probably five, six months away we'll be talking about when we'll be glad that it warms up again.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_07: That's the nature of weather, isn't it?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_06: I see it, yeah.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that is that is the nature.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so anyway, it's good to be back with you guys.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_06: Appreciate you inviting me back on.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_10: We're we're glad to have you.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_10: I don't know why we don't have you on more often, to be honest with you.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_10: We're gonna have to work on that.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_10: Now, Harry lives in North North Carolina, like you said.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_10: Um he's over near Charlotte and I'm over near Fayetteville, so we're only a couple hours apart from each other.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_11: But um go ahead, that's about right.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_10: And w just by happening by chance this week, uh there's a big focus on towing in Charlotte.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_10: So some of our news articles are gonna be about that, so I'll be I know you're not involved in the day-to-day towing business anymore, but I'll be anxious to hear if you have any comments about that.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_10: As a matter of fact, tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are with uh Close Stop and uh how that responders network.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_06: I uh grew up working in uh service station my dad and uncle had.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_06: We had a couple of homemade records and we were on the outskirts of the city and law enforcement hung around a good bit and uh I got to be I got to see the the grown-ups interact with one another and uh it uh created uh um an admiration for law enforcement.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_06: Plus I like the excitement of getting to go out in a tow truck as a kid and uh I developed uh a knack for uh recovery work.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_06: My dad had a guy that worked part-time for him at uh law enforcement in the area considered a real good recovery operator.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_06: Now we only did light duty stuff, but back then an automobile weighed as much as uh a tow truck does today, a one-ton.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_06: So you know, I got trained up really by one of the best in the business.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_06: And uh when I turned 16 uh it was it was a sweet deal because I had to be deployed.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_06: My dad had to have me do that, and I knew that I had to do it correct because if I went out and messed something up, he'd have to pull the checkbook out and straighten it out.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_06: And if he did that, then I wasn't gonna get to go again.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_06: So I was very careful in what I did and how I did it.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_06: Um and then uh I graduated from high school, went to a junior college in Charlotte, uh, and worked uh probably uh sixty hours a week while I was going to school.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_06: Uh got drafted into the army and spent uh two years active duty.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_06: But when I came back, my dad really didn't have the love for the towing business as I did.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_06: So we uh we made a uh kind of uh I would say not uh an arrangement to where I would try to take towing business to new heights, which in a five year period I did.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_06: I bought his interest out and moved to a new location.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_10: And we got wasn't part of that struggle you wanted to um get into the bigger toing and expand that kind of a tail of time over time, as well.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, we uh we didn't have any heavies until the spring of seventy-five and we bought a used um L nine hundred Ford and the difference between the hundreds and the thousands series of the Louisville models was the difference between gasoline and diesel.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_06: So we had a L nine hundred that was a gas job that had air air brakes on it and a home 600.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_06: And uh oh man, and that truck it was strong, but more i it it burnt more gas than a tanker could haul, it seemed like.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_06: You couldn't hardly go anywhere.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_06: I think I gauged it out one time.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_06: We were doing real good if we got five miles to a gallon.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_07: Good lord.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_06: And uh so you can tell that there there was a big expense, but gas back then was but about fifty five cents a gallon.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_10: Okay.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_06: So I'm date I'm dating myself now.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_07: The cost of living is a little bit less back down here though.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, I'm I'm sorry, April, I didn't I said that I said your cost of living for your fifty five cents off a gallon was a little bit um more manageable.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_06: But I'll tell you this much, when we started uh when we got that truck, um, I was towing trucks in Charlotte for like twenty five, thirty dollars a pop and that was taking the drive shaft out too.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_06: And we were towing cars for ten, twelve fifty, something like that.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_06: But then it started climbing up.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_06: Um because expenses started coming in to play more too.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_10: Right.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_10: We went up to minor equipment and so I'm sure it was huge.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_06: But we did more towing than we did recovery work up until nineteen seventy nine, then we started getting into more in recovery.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_10: How did you make that transition?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I um the city of Charlotte had a system of four towing companies they used, and they used a computer to allocate workloads that were equal.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_06: So one each company did about a twenty-five percent workload of what the police department needed.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and you had an area, what they referred to as a zone, and that area is what you maintained and looked after, and there was criteria that you had to adhere to to maintain that contract, and so uh we had a lot of interstate, a lot of interstate highway in our co in our territory, but uh each month you might have one company do 27% and another one do 23 and the other two do 25, but over a 12-month period it equaled out to where everybody did fairly close to 25% each over a count uh calendar year period.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_06: Um and and uh you did uh your other contract work along with it.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_06: Um so I I really I didn't my toying business and and I'll tell you, funny here, the yellow page salesman would come around every year when the telephone books were gonna be published.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_10: And try now, Perry, hang on a second.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_10: For a millennial list shows a telephone book is a big uh white of paper that they would print different uh people's phone numbers in it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_10: You'd have to get it out and dig through it to find someone's phone numbers.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_10: So there we go.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_10: Go ahead.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_06: But that was when when I teach a hazmat class, my opening segment is my background, and I've got some photographs that I've run through on the projector showing the past.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_06: And one of the things are I tell 'em I got into doing spill response, I had to call the EPA office.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_06: And uh there's a blue section in the center of a large book, and the book's thickness, depending on the local population, on how thick it was.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_06: And that blue section in the center had all your government numbers, and that book was known as a telephone directory, which a lot of people have to look at in a museum now because they don't exist.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_06: But going back to the salesman for the yellow page ads, there was an old slogan that the phone company used to use, let your fingers do the walking through the yellow pages to find who you were looking for.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_06: So today people can just Google whatever the subject matter is and find what they need.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I didn't cater to the public on a one-on-one basis for towing.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_06: I had contracts, this is before motor clubs, I had uh uh an agreement just through a handshake or a nod of a head for car dealerships.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_06: And you'd have a car yeah, and we'd have a car dealership, their service riders were instructed to use us to bring disabled vehicles into the garage.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_06: All right, and then I had my police contract, that was um a steady flow as well.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_06: So all my towing was either through the contract or law enforcement.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_06: I didn't look for Joe Q public to call me on the phone.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_06: Now, I that didn't mean I wouldn't tow for the public, but they took a back seat to all the other towing.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_06: So uh the sales the sales rep for the Bell South Yellow Pages could not understand why I would not do any more than a bold print showing my name and phone number.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_06: I just told him, I said, we don't need that because we've got business established that the phone rings on you know regular basis.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_06: And I was fortunate in the fact that back in the mid-70s, early 70s, I towed for the largest Ford dealership in the Carolinas.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_06: And uh just to let you know how many cars they towed, we were towing at the beginning ten dollars a car, and their invoice may run twenty five hundred to three thousand a month.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_06: Now in today's money, and that that doesn't sound like much, but you pull that many, you you divide that by ten, that's how many vehicles were being towed.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, with the co what the cost of living was back then, that was big money.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_06: Oh yeah, well you I tell you the first homes 440 on the F three fifty we bought was uh fifty four hundred dollars, and that was a deluxe with dollars.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_10: What year was that in that middle sixties?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_06: Uh sixty-nine.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_10: Okay.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, we bought the truck my senior year in high school.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_10: Well, uh you really do have a strong background in towing.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_10: Uh and I want to talk about how that you went from there to where you're at now, but we need to take a quick break, so can you hang around and then we'll talk a little more after the break?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_11: Sure.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: We also offer the National Tow Operator Certification, an independently sourced virtual testing program covering light duty, heavy duty, electric, and alternative fuel vehicles.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome back, listeners.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, you know you're coming from the towing equipment direct.com studios to the great podcast, Towing News Now podcast.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_05: We have a great guest for you.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_05: It's my job to remind you that April and Westbur Wilburn are available every week.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_05: And I hope and I I can't thank you enough.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_05: We have over 20,000 listeners on a regular basis.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_05: Make sure you download and listen.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_05: We're available on Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, Stitcher, iArt Media, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcast.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm going to tell you, great customer service at towing equipmentdirect.com.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_05: So without further ado, let me pass you over to the great team of Wes and April Wilburn.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_10: DJ, as always, I appreciate uh you sharing all that information and all the help you do on this podcast to bring it all together.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_10: Uh we got a good one here this week, friends.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_10: We got Perry Bailey.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_10: Uh we talked a little bit about the past.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_10: I'd like to talk to you.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_10: Tell us how that from that cowing background, how you involved into the hazmat uh cleanup business and then eventually the training.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_06: Um the federal government had OSHA, EPA, and DOT come together in the late eighties and put together guidelines for training people for emergency spill response.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_06: And that was at controlled and uncontrolled sites.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_06: And the way I found out about it was at a jack knife tractor trailer wreck where the landing gear had got into the saddle tank on a on a tractor.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_06: And they wouldn't let law enforcement or towing move the truck while it was leaking.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_06: They wanted the leaks stopped and the tank uh sifled off, vaced off, however you want to call it.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_06: And they had to wait like two hours to get a company on location to do that job.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_10: And that started So hang on a second, let's paint the scene a little bit.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_10: This is a a live interstate accident?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_06: It is, yeah.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_10: What time of day?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_06: Early in the morning, rush hour.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_10: Is it going is the incident sitting there going to affect rush hours?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_06: Oh yeah, very much so.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_06: Okay.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_10: And and the and who was it?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_10: The EPA showed up and said again.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, the highway the North Carolina Highway Patrol summons us to send a large record.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_06: I happen to be the one that went out and uh he told me get it off the road, and when I went to position and and hooked to it to move it, a guy walked up in civilian clothes and told me not to touch it.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_06: And then we found out he was with the EPA and they didn't want it moved while it was leaking because it would c cause what they called cross-contamination.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_06: And so that was the law.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_06: It came into effect March of 1990, and I had no knowledge of it, but still, you know, it was no excuse.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_06: So uh we had like three of those incidents happened over about a six week period.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_06: And it was a real job getting someone out there certified to do that work where you can move the unit.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_10: So the EPA was aggressively showing up on DC?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_06: They were.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_11: Yeah.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_11: Sorry for interrupted.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, sorry.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_06: So anyway, after about three of those episodes and and uh time being money and being held up waiting on whoever was coming, I just looked at the big picture and decided it was something that I could add on to the towing business and do myself.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_06: And I had to check, that goes back to the telephone book, looking at the EPA in the blue section, government section of the phone directory, and I put in a call to find out what was required, how you went about it.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_06: And uh same way I had to take a uh certification class and uh before I could uh uh be uh granted the opportunity to go out there and do the cleanup.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_10: So uh we're talking certification classes as a correspondence course is a subject.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_06: Uh it was uh it was a forty hour class that the government set up and they had uh different companies that uh had trained up showed proficiency in uh conveying that information to individuals that wanted to do the work.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_06: So I went and uh got my certification and took two of my key people with me and uh we went through the class and uh we all three uh had had a passing grade so we could we were certified.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_06: So we would go out now with that being said, OSHA requires two certified technicians at a spill.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_06: Doesn't matter if it's acid, diesel fuel, or Kool-Aid, if it wants a cleanup, OSHA says two technicians, two trained technicians will be required.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_06: So as we went along, I started taking other folks and sending them through the class.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_10: And what what what year time frame were we talking?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_06: I I started in the early nineties.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_06: And I had a had a very good attorney and he told me he did not want me to run my spiel cleanup business under the same heading as the towing business.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_06: That way, if there was ever anything that happened, it would be a separate entity.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_06: And so we Charlotte being in the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, and I felt like 75 mile radius would be all we'd be impactful on, I would call it Piedmont Environmental Response Team.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_06: Now, if I had life to live over, hazmat and environmental would not be in my company name.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_06: And the reason being is you've got exterminating pest control companies call themselves uh environmental, and hazmat scares the bejeebies out of people, so I'd want to use a name that told who I was and what I did.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_06: So I might be Piedmont spill response.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_06: Who who am I?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_06: I'm Piedmont.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_06: What do I do?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_06: I respond to spills.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_10: And and you're also telling them where you're doing doing it, which is a little extra benefit.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_10: I agree I I agree with your thoughts on the name, but most people don't take the time to think like that.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, but no let me also say this, going back to the towing industry, I had enough trucking accounts when there was uh a lot of your um freight haulers that I towed for and already knew their safety directors for doing their accidents and so forth.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_06: So when I got everything set up I went to 'em and I said, I want to introduce Piedmont environmental response team to you.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_06: It's it's us with a different company that can handle not just traffic accidents, but if you have a a loading dock mishap or a fuel island mishap, we can clean that up for you as well.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_06: So I had a client base instantly Yeah, that's that's awesome.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_11: Yeah Yeah.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_10: That's a good way to build that vertical integration as well.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_06: So you know, and we got a lot of exposure, you know, with uh we ha uh we had at least twenty different companies and you'd be surprised how many of 'em over a period of one year might have a oops.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_06: All right.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_06: So if you take twenty companies and say only half of 'em have a mishap monthly, then you're gonna be doing close to a dozen spell responses in a in a calendar month.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_06: And um that's a good via.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, that that's a good base to work off of.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_06: Mm-hmm.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_10: S speaking of our base and working off of it, we need to take another quick commercial and I want to come back and I've got some serious questions for you.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_10: I want to know directly today how television recovery companies can benefit from uh training.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_10: Hold on to that question.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: We look forward to serving you.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome back, listeners.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, we're coming from the towing equipment direct.com studios.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_05: I want to remind all of you, please like and review and share everywhere.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_05: We thank you very much for telling fellow towers and recovery personnel about this podcast, the Towing News Now podcast.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_05: We appreciate each and every one of you.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_05: If you have an association and you want to put association news on the podcast, uh the hotline number is 706-409-5603.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_05: And let me pass it on over to Wes.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_10: All right, DJ, again, I appreciate the uh all the uh praise.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_10: And I and I do agree with you.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_10: We want to thank our listeners, make sure you subscribe, like and share.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_10: We really appreciate that.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_10: We're here with April Wilburn, Perry Beatty.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_10: We're talking about uh Perry's path to the industry and how he's helped many members of the of the telling industry take their business to the next level.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_10: Um, Perry, t talk to us about how sewing and coverage companies can benefit from the training.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_06: Well, it gives them an opportunity to build a a second standalone business and a specialized portion of it.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_06: Um the way it fits in with towing industry now, uh if you have an accident uh 18 wheeler involved, um that's a uh and it and the fuel tanks compromise.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_06: It's a good bit volume of fuel that can spill out.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_06: And uh it needs to be cleaned up.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_06: If it happened to run in my yard with a busted fuel tank, I want my yard back in pristine shape, and it's gonna require somebody that knows what they're doing to come out and extract that contaminated soil or treat it and put my property back in uh the condition it was before the accident.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_06: And towing companies that go out to respond uh to work the accident, they're already on scene.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_06: Why not just go on and do that portion of it as well?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, m it makes sense for many reasons.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_06: Plus the authorities love making one call and it cover everything needs to be done.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_07: Oh yeah.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_07: I can see how much more efficient that would be and they can move on and do the rest of their day.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_06: And going back to what I said about me being held up, I mean it cuts down on the towing company's equipment being personnel and equipment being tied up waiting on another company to show up and do that phase of it.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_06: Whereas they can take and handle the entire deal.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, it makes sense for so many different reasons.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_07: Carrie, who uh who governs the regulations of what you do?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, the federal government sets up the guidelines.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_06: OSHA's pretty much the big brother that looks over everything.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_06: Uh you've got the EPA and DOT involved as well.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_06: But now you might have an OSHA rep come out, but a lot of you of your uh municipalities have emergency management agencies, your fire departments have uh different levels.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_06: Uh you might have a captain or a lieutenant over hazmat with a fire department, and that depends on the size of the department, and they know what to look for and how to direct things being done uh overseeing that.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_06: So uh you're you know, the the towing industry, if these guys become a technician, they're not a first responder, they're what I call a responsible responder, and they're responsible for cleaning up and putting the the uh property back into uh condition before the accident.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_06: But they're also uh answering up to whoever the governmental official is on site.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_07: Okay, and then what kind of equipment or um clothing would you would somebody wear to do this kind of work?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_06: Well, naturally, uh means of uh shovels and rakes and grass seed pumps, uh pneumatic uh air drills so they can drill into a saddle tank if necessary to evacuate it.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_06: Um and just uh a lot of different hand tools, spark resistant, wrenches, uh hammers and so forth like that.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_06: Uh drums, spill pools, um things of that nature.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_06: And we cover that uh on uh at the conclusion of our technician class.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_07: And then what's like the safety gear with like the emergency eye wash and things like that, would that be the thing?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_06: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_06: And a first aid kit.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_06: It'd be more than just uh band-aids and and uh rubbing alcohol, yeah.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_07: That's my that's my first aid kit.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I I would imagine you would need a lot more under under that.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_07: Um how how does the emergency management agencies come into into the system?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_06: Well, if it's uh severe or a large enough release, they'll be notified so they can come out and uh document what it is and how it's being handled.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_06: Um for an example, t twenty-eight years ago we had a fuel hauler turnover in the western part of North Carolina, and uh when it came to stop it was underneath a a bridge over an interstate and it erupted in flames and the flames from ninety two hundred gallons of gasoline and the heat burnt the bridge girders and collapsed the bridge.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_06: And it was a three-day deal where the interstate was shut down for three days because of uh when the one side collapsed it made the other side unstable, so they had to shut it both directions down.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_06: And so uh the the state uh came out of North Carolina engineers and all from the road and highway department uh just to make sure all that was taken down.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_06: Uh all the soil we went in and and remediated all the uh impacted soil from the gasoline spill uh and brought topsoil in.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_06: They had to dig up the burnt pavement and repave the road.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_06: So you had the local fire department, you had the state uh EPA division for uh there, and the local fire department and emergency management agency overseeing making sure everything operated right and everything was done that was necessary to put that interstate back in pristine shape for travel.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_06: And it took the accident happen on Friday at noon and they opened the interstate back up for traffic on Monday at noon.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_06: Now the bridge was rebuilt years later, but it was good for both directions of travel again.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_06: But all those agencies came together to make sure it was done correct.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_07: See, that just goes to show you that sometimes all these systems can work i you watch the news and you see how things go, but it does look it does show that sometimes these systems all can work together.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, m most of the time most of the time they work.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_07: That's true.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_07: How many different levels of class do you do you teach?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I do the initial technician class and then I also offer in-person annual update, which is a one-day class.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and then I had to over a period of time ask me about tankers and so forth, and I handled a lot of that in my towing days, and I built two simulators, and one of them holds a hundred gallons of fluid, the other one holds 30.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_06: And I have all the valves and fittings that you'll find on a fuel hauler, which is known as a DOT-406, a chemical workhorse hauler known as a DOT-407, and then your corrosive hauler is labeled as a DOT-412.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_06: Now, DOT, this is where they come into play.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_06: They dictate what material is used to buy uh to build these, what the capacity of the product can be, uh vapor pressures, relief valves on these tanks, and I have all that laid out, and I can show them in a class, which I call cargo tank awareness, how to go about approaching and handling these different tankers when they're distressed.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_06: They may not even be overturned, they may be compromised, run off the road, leaning against uh a pole or a tree, and you have to handle them to uh maybe transfer the load.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_06: How do you do that safely?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_06: So I can show them that in a closed loop system, and uh we've gone now to where we're using uh our cargo tank awareness class to where if we have a host, a towing company that host one, they have access to a damaged tanker that we'll have that's empty that we can lay on its side.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_06: Once we go through the classroom portion, let them do the hands-on of transferring under pressure one tank to another, then showing them how to address an overturned fuel hauler with different pieces of equipment, and then drill and back it out.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_06: Then we'll go out in the field wherever we're located, and we'll show them peck points, rigging, and uprighting of that tank.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_06: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_06: And that's one of the portions that's uh covered in the technician is is grounding and the reason why and bonding to a receiving unit.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_06: And we have the equipment and it's hands-on and we have the uh participants in the class actually set up and calibrate the meter and set up the ground field.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_10: So if someone wants you to uh bring one of these classes to their location, uh how do they we can't contact you to start talking about that?
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_06: Well, they can they can call me uh and we can discuss, I'll let 'em know.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I I require so many students on a uh the way I gauge it is how far is it for me to travel?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_06: And that naturally the further I have to go, the more I'll need to enroll in the class to make it financially feasible for me to go do it.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_06: So um yeah, I and and I put out a ad, um I do a lot of advertising on Facebook, Hasmat Responder Network, and I just tell people if you're interested in hosting the class or want to know where there's one near, wherever you're located, contact me and I'll let you know.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_06: So um we have a class coming up in two weeks in Marshall, Texas, and we're gonna be doing technician training as well as the cargo tank rigging and recovery.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, uh it'll actually be next week by the time this podcast closed.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_10: So what what's the date on that?
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_10: Uh August the fifteenth?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_06: Technician class is uh August thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_06: That's a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_06: And uh we go all day.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_06: I mean we power pack a bunch of information in those days, and then August sixteenth we'll do the cargo tank awareness as well as rigging and recovery on that one.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_10: This is marshall testing.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, sir.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_06: Uh just outside the back of the It's uh it's in the eastern part off of I-20.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_06: I think it's about maybe fifty miles west of Shreveport, Louisiana.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_11: Okay.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_11: Uh that's a very nice area.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_10: A lot of good operators in that area.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_10: We've definitely been through Shreveport many times.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_10: Uh tell us a little bit, give us an overview of uh Flowstop.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, FlowStop is an equ is uh equipment.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_06: When uh I first started off in Hazmat cleanup, uh the Charlotte EPA got to uh calling us out for a lot of different spills and a lot and uh there were some that weren't traffic accidents and we had storm drains that were impacted and they wanted the storm drain cleaned out.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_06: I didn't have any means to uh stop or control the flow in a storm drain.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_06: They're open-end uh systems that are static drain lines, gravity discharge, and I knew that a rubber plug being part uh petroleum, if you run gasoline or chemical in on a rubber plug, it's gonna eat it up eventually, and you're gonna have to buy another plug.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_06: You won't be able to tell if it's deteriorated enough until you inflate it, and then if it blows up, you've lost it.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_06: And I sit down with some urethane.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_06: Engineers and we come up with a 50 mil thick uh polyurethane that would expand and come back.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_06: It would expand out of 80% and come back to its original shape.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_06: And I thought if I could use aluminum uh ports making it strictly spark resistant and put an eighth of an inch thick nitrill sleeve around this inflatable, we can make uh make them where they would inflate and cover like three-size pipes.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_06: And we were successful in building two plugs that'll cover everything from a 12 to a 36-inch uh pipe.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_06: And that's where flow stop comes in.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_06: We had a I had a guy help me with it on marketing, and he said it stops the flow, reverse it and let it be called flow stop.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_06: So everything I make as far as equipment, and I've come up with like dome leg clamps for a DOT 406, um wheat pole.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_10: So hang hang on, just but so what he's talking about as dome glue clamps.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_10: You have an overturned anchor, the product pushing against that dome lid, his cap comes in there and reinforces it.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_10: It's a brilliant design.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and I mean, you know, you take gasoline, uh, you take a compartment, 1500 gallons of gasoline, you're looking at 9,500 pounds pushing on that dome lid wanting out.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_06: And there's a dinner plate-sized plate on the top, it's got a gasket, and it may be dripping.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_06: You put a clamp on there and just tighten it down, hand tight, and stop the drip.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_06: That's all you want to do, hand tighten it.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_06: If you over-tighten it and crush that gasket, you're gonna have more in the drip.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_06: And that comes with you know, training, which we have every all the training age to show that.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_06: Um wheat hole kit.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_06: Uh there's wheat holes on these tankers.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_06: Um that's in depth.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_06: We explain all that in the cargo tank class.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_06: Uh also go ahead.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_10: Wouldn't you say a big part of your course is teaching from a code standpoint the about the construction of the tank and how uh how that matters during during the the recovery operation?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_06: Well, number one, the National Fire Protection Association, which is known as NFPA, and the American Petroleum Institute, known as API, strongly advocate do not ever upright a loaded fuel tanker.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_06: All it takes is a static spark, and you you just unleash the bomb.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_06: You need and and just because you do transfer all the fuel out of it to another tank doesn't mean the coast is clear.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_06: Now you've got vapors that are still present.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_06: So we go over all that.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_11: Well well said, very well said.
• 47:28
  unknown: Yeah.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_11: So how can people find out more about your products?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_06: Um, well, first and foremost, if you attend one of these classes, you're gonna get educated on them.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_06: But if you run up on an issue out there in the field, then give me a call.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_06: We have what's called a football and a golf ball that you wet and it expands and will harden within three minutes and blocks off uh puncture and fuel tanks, drums, IBCs, any type thing.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_06: A boat hole.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_06: It works under the water.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_06: We've got a YouTube video called Flowstop Football.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_06: People can watch.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_06: Three minutes long.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_06: It's uh kind of interesting, won't bore you.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_06: Uh it shows you how to deploy it and how it works.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and then we have a website called Flowstop.net, and you can go on there and see the different arrangements of products that we carry.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_10: Those footballs are super handy.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_10: If I was running a heavy record or any size unit nowadays, I definitely have a little a little of the other type of equipment.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_10: And I also want to thank April for working with AI and putting together a 2027 state telling legislation report.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_10: Uh done from an unbiased angle.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_10: It's available on our website.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_10: Telling us.com.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_10: It's a free download, it's not to take a look at.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_10: So we would I would like to make that happen as well.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_09: And I would also like to ask anybody if there's anything that's interesting here.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_09: Um DMS up the webinar Facebook page telling us on my direct Facebook page or the podcast uh Facebook page, which is telling you from my direct app.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_09: Either one of those uh let me know what else doctors are on the other.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, well, this is a growing document.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_10: So take go to go to our website, take a look at uh training and certification and we have double classes planned.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_10: Uh you can check your schedule out to get more information.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_10: So for more information on the electronic parking brake tool, uh give me a call.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_10: 910-7479000.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_10: Uh-huh.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_10: There's information on the website, Tony Equipment Graphics.com.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_10: Uh the tool itself is just under$30.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_10: Well, Perry, it's been great having you on as a guest.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_10: Um we look forward to see seeing you out there and uh having you back on the the podcast more often.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_11: Okay, right.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_11: Any thoughts you'd like to leave our listeners with?
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_06: Uh no, just uh stay safe, wear the proper uh protective equipment when you're out there, and let's just keep trying to educate people to slow down and move over.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_11: Absolutely, a hundred percent on that.
• 51:06
  unknown: Yeah.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_11: Perry, we thank you.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_10: I want to thank our listeners.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_10: We know we ran a little bit long today.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_10: Um, but so we'll have a great episode for you next week.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_10: Perry, thank you.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_10: April.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_10: I wanna I do want to thank April.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_10: She produced this whole podcast this week.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_10: It did an excellent job.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_07: So with the help of my friend Chuck.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_07: Chuck, who who's our great pod who is our great um producer.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_07: But yes, I did a lot of the the behind the scenes work as far as getting everything put together.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_07: So thank you for acknowledging that.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_07: And uh thank everybody for being a part of this podcast.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and I want to thank y'all for what you do for the industry and uh appreciate you having inviting me and having me on this one.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_10: We appreciate you being here, Perry.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_10: It's always a pleasure.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_10: Uh every time I talk to you I learned something.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_10: So So until next time, Worcester, be safe out there.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_10: Thank you.