We have all seen the television ads for the insurance company where the character called “Mayhem”, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black tie, flies off of the back of a pickup truck or falls thirty feet causing extensive injury to himself, others and damage to their property. This past winter, Mayhem hit some heating oil dealers.
The winter of 2013 – 2014 has proven to be one of the harshest winters of the past twenty years. The snowfall totals were among the highest in years, and that combined with the subzero temperatures really took a toll on the heating oil business. Here at Jamie Oil, we paid our experienced employees overtime to work on the HESS plan, which stands for Holidays, Evenings, Saturdays and Sundays. We had nine oil trucks out on the road on New Year’s Day, as well as Saturday, January 4, the coldest day in MetroWest in over ten years.
As far as service goes, not one of our customers went cold. We had ten licensed service technicians, with an average of twenty-seven years of experience each, on the road. They were able to rely on our two warehouses that are stocked with oil burner and service parts to better serve our customers and protect us and them against Mayhem.
When we opened the office on New Year’s Day, Tony Borelli our General Manager, with over forty years of experience, arrived at 6:30 am to manage operations. When the temperature was minus nine over the weekend, we staffed the office with eight people to better service our customers. A safe four wheel drive SUV dubbed as “Tommy’s Taxi” picked up office staff during several snowstorms which insured our customers a voice on the phone during the crisis. Our Service Manager John Gallagher (with thirty-seven years experience) kept our trucks running and allowed us to do what we do best: guarantee our customers quality, especially when the going gets tough.