Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Fort McMurray, wood, Buffalo, and the rest of the world. You've tuned in to the Mac city morning show. I'm your host, Elliot Pierre. And we're going to start the show off the same way we start every show off with a moment of gratitude. I know you could be doing a million other things with your time. So the fact that you spend it with us truly does mean the world to me. So thank you on that note, Tanner hit him with the intro.
Speaker 1 00:00:19 Oh, she caught me loves you're listening to the next any morning show.
Speaker 0 00:00:27 All right. And we're back. I'm excited about this gas. He's a returning guest. You guys don't know this, but we should have just turned the cameras on about like an hour ago. Cause we've just been chatting. So you're just getting, uh, you just coming in now, but this conversation has been going on for a bit. So on that note, you know, I don't introduce my guests. I let them do that themselves. So sir, can you please tell everybody at home who you are and what you're about?
Speaker 3 00:00:47 Sure. Good area, buddy. It's Bob McKay on the market manager for superior propane here in Fort McMurray. Also a proud granddad. I got two wonderful grandchildren and a little family here on Fort Mac. Love it living here, man.
Speaker 0 00:00:58 There you go. I've got a question like this. I had one question that I wanted to ask you outside of the conversation we're having. I know nothing about propane. The only thing I know about propane is I have to get it for my barbecue. That's it? That's like a lot of people. That's all I know about propane. Yeah. So I was thinking about it today when I was like, okay, Bob's coming on, we've chatted a bit. I need to ask him something about propane. What use does propane have in the winter lake? I'm like, I have to assume it's an a year round thing, but I'm not buying any from my barbecue in the winter. So I have no need for it. What are some needs in the winter for propane?
Speaker 3 00:01:31 Yeah. So a lot of people, it's funny. I had people say to me to say your busiest time has been the summer. Actually the summer is our slowest time. Really it's because you think about everybody gets their 20 pound cylinder. Like you have in your barbecue and you sell a few of that. But primarily what we do here in Fort McMurray is 100% heat. Um, you know, there was restaurants whenever, like for instance, the AMW in Fort McKay, we provide the propane for them. So they do all their burners and stuff and other the way they fry your burgers up, that's us. But, uh, we, uh, the propane we use up here primarily is for heat. Um, January-ish when the ice road gets up to Fort chip. Uh, this time last year, we, I think it was the number was running 770,000 liters appropriately delivered there last year.
Speaker 3 00:02:12 So that's all for their homes because they don't have natural gas up there. So we brought it all in and chucked it all in till the, to the very end. Yeah. So the camps, uh, your, you may see your CVO camps, big camps. I got there. We provide all the propane for their heat. So yeah, that's a huge thing. A big part of our business. Even down the Kasmin center, down over there doing cosmic construction should say down there back island for the main tea center. Yeah. That's us. We provide all the propane for the heaters.
Speaker 0 00:02:38 Okay. Interesting. See, coming from Fort McMurray and Alberta, I made the assumption that yeah, everybody's on natural gas. And I remember when I used to be a recruiter and I traveled around the east coast all the time. You had Irving oil. Oh yeah. And Irving is delivering gas to like every house in the east coast because they don't have those natural gas lines picked it or plumbed in. So I knew that was a industry in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, PEI, so on and so forth. But I never knew that about for Fort McMurray. I just assumed everybody was on natural gas.
Speaker 3 00:03:11 Here's a huge thing. Draper road, no natural gas. Really? Every home on Draper road is heated by propane, a tower road to the where the horse juice.
Speaker 0 00:03:20 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Okay. So that's what you do with propane. And because I'm like the average guy you talked about, man, you guys wants to be so slow. I'm not making burgers or
Speaker 3 00:03:32 Average. Like in, in July we probably sell about 800,000 liters in January of last year. We did 6.2 million liters.
Speaker 0 00:03:41 Wow. That's nuts. Now we were talking about before and I like to talk about this conversation, this topic of conversation. I don't get to do it very often. So we were just talking about hiring, um, employees and like the stories. And we're not going to tell all the stories. They're not all good, but if, uh, like what are you guys looking for right now? Are you looking for employees? And if you are, what what's the criteria people should have when they come in
Speaker 3 00:04:06 For good people? I guess that's the thing, no matter what, like we were on, we had kind of a level of stress. You may say in October, September, October, that's generally the time we bring on what we call our seasonal drivers again, because it speaks to us. So we literally, we almost triple the size of our staffing in the wintertime because of the volume. Um, but with the extended season, with the good, we rely, a lot of times we will work say one of the local construction companies and they, they tend to get laid off maybe end of September, beginning of October, that didn't happen this year. So that caused a real, like, what are we going to do here? So a lot of them were w we weren't getting them until, you know, quite frankly, the end of October, one thing we're delivering propane and no disrespect to any other truck driver out there, but there is a lot of training and it's not that it's not anything to do with the driving. Um, there's a significant amount of handling training and whatever all together, um, just for superior, propane has over 32 courses. And then for this other company called Petrolia, or this requirement is portrayal petroleum training Institute, which is three different courses to get to take. So all in all before a guy from the data start before he even turns a tire is three to four weeks.
Speaker 0 00:05:13 Wow. That's an intensive training process. It is heavy
Speaker 3 00:05:17 Duty.
Speaker 0 00:05:17 'cause like, that's crazy. That's nuts. Cause I know like for oil and gas, just because of H two S fall protection, all that kind of stuff, like I would try to shrink it down, but you're looking at a minimum of seven days minimum and that, and sometimes longer oil and gas, we're like, that's long. Like how can we shorten this town? Yeah. That's a very extensive training process.
Speaker 3 00:05:37 It's like, you know, you think of the big picture. Like, I, I, I'm one of these guys that I, um, I don't know. And I look at things I think, and I know myself, if I was somebody didn't know anything were propane and as seen as yellow truck driving through downtown, I want to know that guy behind the wheel is competent knows what he's doing because you know, and not to scare anybody, but it's carrying a flammable volatile. Boom. Yeah. And in reality, it is quite frankly. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:06:01 What I said two ways to say that the professional way in the go boom way.
Speaker 3 00:06:05 Yeah. But I mean, like I say, it's just that, but like, that's one of the things we make sure to, even into the part, we get them on the road when we put them with one of our trainers, I don't say, okay, Elliot, you're ready to go. You say, Bob, I'm ready to go. So because it is like, I mean, it's, again, it's not a terrifying thing. Once you understand the science behind propane it's sustained, but I mean yeah.
Speaker 0 00:06:27 And you get used to it. Right. You get used to it. Yeah. Just like my last, uh, okay. I gotta say real job, I guess. Uh, when I used to work for accurate, um, accurate and deals with radiation, they did nondestructive testing. Yep. Yep. And so I think most individuals, like they have sources like radiation sources there. And I think the average individual and you're like, oh, radiation, they get a little bit nervous. But then once you get trained and you find out about it and like how you work around it, how you work safely, it's like anything you just kinda, you know, it is what it is. But yeah, the, the general consumer, the general public, when they hear certain things.
Speaker 3 00:07:05 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It doesn't. Matter of fact, I just had a meeting with Zack there and they, they here's a refinery and they weren't up on all the safety features that we have. They were building a whole emergency measures program around when we go to site. And when I give them the full list of all the safety features on this truck, I'll tell you it's pretty hard for something to go wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:07:26 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Now let's talk about something personal on your behalf. Sure. You have a place down south where you like to hang out, you chill out. Yeah. So I was thinking a few days ago, I'm like, oh, I wonder what Bob does with that in the winter.
Speaker 3 00:07:41 Miss it a lot.
Speaker 0 00:07:43 Yeah. Cause you have like a whole set up. So like, do you stripped everything down? Like what does this look like? What's the winterization program.
Speaker 3 00:07:51 It's funny for the last, probably the last three weeks of the camping season. I am doing a major amount of reinforcement. Like we're going everything there. And I was actually, like I mentioned to you, I was in BC this weekend and uh, on the way back I was actually going to swing in. But it was, it was a little long on the, on the day. So I just kept on trucking by so probably gonna roll down this weekend, check everything. But no, a lot of reinforcement, a lot of building up a lot, a lot, a lot of preparation because nothing worse. We had a winter probably was three, four years ago. We went back and uh, needless to say, uh, mice colony made a home in our camper. Oh no,
Speaker 0 00:08:25 That wasn't pretty.
Speaker 3 00:08:28 It was gross, man. It was gross. So anyway, we, we make, now we give it so that doesn't happen anywhere, but it's a lot of work, right? Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:08:34 Yeah. Yeah. Because I was thinking about it. Cause you have like, uh, for the people at home, you've never seen the picture probably, but you have like a beautiful setup, like indoor outdoor,
Speaker 3 00:08:44 And it's a huge covered, uh, we call it a party's zone. I got a big burn. It, we got donor makers, we get grilled, we get the whole thing set
Speaker 0 00:08:53 Up. This is, this is a massive undertaking to get it set up. I wonder if you've got to take all of this down and if so, like do you store like so, okay, so you went, tries everything and then you go check on it.
Speaker 3 00:09:05 Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:09:06 Did you have a good,
Speaker 3 00:09:07 You know, it was an awesome summer. It was, it was one of those things. That's, I'll tell you when you leave and then you put the padlock on the gate. It is literally like, uh, but then he looked at your watch and go, Hey, wait a minute. Now we're only five months away. And literally every day we count, every weekend goes by, you say to yourself, that's only three more months. You know, it's just, it's just literally like I could get, I'm not a big COVID talker because I find it's over-talked in the industry and the news and everything. But that truly, I can tell you, man, I think that has done more for our, my family Saturday literally had that escape. Cause we don't, we go down there, we listen to our own program music. We have a big Blair and sound system down there. We played anything country, whatever rock and roll. We don't listen to the news down there. It is literally our escape go down and play a few rounds of golf or whatever it is. But yeah, it's a, it's definitely a piece that really helped us through everything that's happened over the last two years. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:10:02 Well you're fortunate to have somewhere else to go. Yeah. I know. Like when COVID first started, I had an office in town. Um, and well, I didn't need the office per se. I can do what I do or my house, my house for the most part. But I'm telling you the fact that like when I had like a little guy running around and Kay was still at home doing her thing, I was like, thank goodness I have somewhere else to go. Um, not everybody has somewhere else to go when you're in, stuck in like your house with all of the distractions, as we talked about earlier, like it's tough to get anything done or get any form of mental clarity. Okay.
Speaker 3 00:10:41 Uh, you and I were trying to, we meditate and he likes to go near our previous talk before the show. Um, and that fire, when you have a campfire going man, and you sit there just staring into the fire, it was like a high powered shop vac to clean all the stuff out. Oh, it's just, I would come away for an hour on a Monday and come back to work. So refreshed. I'm like, okay, here's where we're, here's how we're dealing with stuff right now.
Speaker 0 00:11:03 It's a crazy thing about a fire. I don't know, like that's primal, but like yeah. When you got a fire, you just start looking. It's impossible to have a bad time looking at a fire. Yeah.
Speaker 5 00:11:14 If you look too close, it can be a bad time. If you get too
Speaker 3 00:11:17 Close eyebrows little syndrome.
Speaker 0 00:11:20 All right. Tanner just pointed out his phone. That means his questions are ready. So you know what it is. It's time for the Mac CD minute. Tanner hit him with the Mac CT minute,
Speaker 5 00:11:29 Uh, question number one. Why is the company you work for? Truly superior.
Speaker 3 00:11:36 It's in the name and because I worked there. There you go.
Speaker 5 00:11:41 Question number two. What is one thing people would be surprised you can use propane for,
Speaker 3 00:11:47 For cooling,
Speaker 5 00:11:49 Cooling. Yeah, that surprised me. Yeah. Question three. What is your favorite part of being a grandparent in the same place you raised your own children?
Speaker 3 00:11:59 Uh, you know, it just, that's a, that's a very long answer, but it's just, this, this community is so amazing. And it's knowing that my, my grandkids are gonna grow up in us and experience everything. Or is it before Mac Ray from the indigenous experience to the land? To the woods to, I dunno if like it's just, I could go on for probably an hour. It just does. There's so many things here for sure.
Speaker 5 00:12:20 Question number four. What is your favorite part of getting to work within the small or communities in wood? Buffalo?
Speaker 3 00:12:27 He didn't know the people now. That's one of the things I did last year when the white ice shreds first opened, I made it a point to go to Fort chip and I went up there and just to meet with the folks. And it didn't, I, it was a, a joke. Somebody was almost like an ice cream truck driving into town because people were like, oh my God, the propane guys. But just getting to know the people. I absolutely love it, man. That's one of my biggest things. Cool.
Speaker 5 00:12:46 And your final question, what is your favorite part of bringing heat to so many different places?
Speaker 3 00:12:52 My favorite poet bringing, he, it just it's, again, it goes back to the people thing because there's so much interaction and we, and like I say, our clients are diverse. We have people that maybe consume a thousand liters or something that control consumers, a million they're all for the same purpose. Right. So yeah.
Speaker 5 00:13:07 Those have been your five questions.
Speaker 0 00:13:08 Had you ever been to Fort chip prior to know? Oh yeah. It's beautiful.
Speaker 3 00:13:13 And it's amazing. I guess that's in the cooling winter. I was, I flew over and I've been to, um, I did a fishing trip. One time I went up to that Indian head resort, way up north and Athabaska lake there. And uh, but coming it's so many things like when, when somebody, you hear all the stories about Fort chip and it's, it's almost, you don't know what to expect. So when you get there, your mind is kinda, you know, preload it with other people's thoughts and we get there and it's like, this is a cool little town.
Speaker 0 00:13:39 Yeah. My mom's been going up for years. And so shows like, Kelly, do you need to go? You need to go. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it wasn't until I was an adult, I was in my thirties. And I went out during the winter, driving on the ice roads for one was such an experience. And at the time I remember a component that I was at, there was guys poking holes, and I was like, whoa, why are they doing that? Like, oh, you got to get some water to like, like enforce it. I'm just like, all right. If you say so, so, and then like when you drive across like the guys with he'd put down the windows and I'm like, why are you putting on a windows? It's freezing cold outside. He's like, Hey, just in case it like cracks, you gotta jump out and like, live like what have I got myself into? And it was fine. And I've been up a few times since, but then when, so that's an experience, a great experience if you go with the right people. Um, but then when you get there, talk about beautiful from like the scenery to the people. Unreal.
Speaker 3 00:14:36 Yeah. Last year I took a, one of the guys that would be first for his trip and I learned very quickly don't look in your mirrors, just keep going. Okay. So anyway, he looked in the side of the mirror and saw a little bit of water wash across the road. Bob Bob is a look forward. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:14:50 Hilarious. That's too funny. Yeah, I know. It's beautiful, but I haven't. And I hear it's equally as beautiful,
Speaker 3 00:14:57 But in a completely different way, I haven't made it up there into the summer. I hear the summers or something else. Yeah. We got to, we have actually a big project going on. It's required by the government. We've got to over a hundred. I think it's 192 tanks. We have to swap out of Fort chip over the next two years, because most of the age of the tanks. So we got to swap them all out. So we're going to have staff up there in the summertime as well. I am going to take the opportunity this year, coming to fly up and check it all out.
Speaker 0 00:15:23 Anybody carry your suitcases or something. Hey, if you're
Speaker 3 00:15:26 Wondering road trip, but I want to tell him and I sure, brother, you're more than welcome jump in the truck.
Speaker 0 00:15:29 I'm Hey, I'll take you up on that one. So you were also saying, this is why I love the Mac CD mini. Cause it just like gives me tons of ideas to talk about propane can cool. How's propane cooling, anything,
Speaker 3 00:15:41 Propane lobby. You don't realize. So when you get propane in your tank and your barbecue, yeah. It's actually a liquid eye. It's not like everything's just the gas on, it's a liquid that vaporizes and you burn the vapor, but the, the propane and chills at minus 40, it actually boils at minus 40. So like a lot of times you, especially your RVs, you'll see on the switch, on your deck, on your, on your fridge. And you can either go to electric or on propane. So the propane actually call is like, just like any kind of chilling agent, like at any one of the ones that are free on your different ones. Uh, it acts as the same as those as the cooling agent. So it actually keeps your fridge cold because the liquid goes through the lines and it cools everything.
Speaker 0 00:16:19 Interesting. See things, you never know things. You never know. It's one of those, like, this is why I love doing the show. There's so many things on, like when you go to school, you learn, you learn math, social science, English, and you have some electives. And then you meet with your counselors and they tell you about some of the job opportunities that are out there that they're aware of. And guidance counselors are awesome. I'm not knocking them, but they can't know about every single industry and like based on your skillset. And so like when people come on the show and based on my previous career as a recruiter, human resources too, like there's so many cool opportunities and jobs that are out there that I think the majority of people have no idea about.
Speaker 3 00:17:02 For instance, this year coming 20, 22, I've been given him my budget, uh, to apprentice roles as a propane gas gastroenter so you can go to school and you gotta take a gas, fitter train at school. There's like a, maybe a chapter on propane. And they are so different. The two items, natural gas versus propane, just from the pressures they run out and all the different components to it. Yeah. So to find somebody who's actually knowledgeable in propane gas fitting is hard. So one of the guys that have worked with me right now in our tool crib, um, pushing them along a little bit there, young men, 20 years old, I said, look, I'd like to get you into the gastro Trey propane. And he's all for it. So guess that's what I mean, you're a hundred percent right, man. There's so many cool things out there that you,
Speaker 0 00:17:45 I have this one buddy who he, uh, works an organization. I'm not even going to try to say what this is called, but basically they have to test fire alarms, like smoke alarms and stuff. And I'm just like, what? And I was like, is that a thing? He's like, yeah. I was like, you go into people's houses and you check their lumps. Like, no, he's like apartments buildings. And his company had like a contract to do all of the downtown, um, arena Rexall. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so he's like, you gotta go, you need to install all of these there's electrical work. And he's like, but then like it's government mandated that you have to test these alarms to make sure like, these buildings are like up to code. And so if there is a fire that the alarms work, I'm like really? And he's like, yeah, it's kind of like nondestructive testing and NDT. Like nobody knows what NDT is, but like it's government mandated that you have to do it. And like both of those NDT and testing, fire and propane, like you're not going to get that information talking to a guidance counselor. No, they're just not going to know. And it's not because they're bad people. They just don't know.
Speaker 3 00:18:51 I school, I talked to my guidance counselor. Cause I, I want to be that guy that tested cars. Oh yeah. You see that you see BMW over and see them on the, on the test tracks and stuff. So when I was a teenager, that was my goal. I got to figure out a way to get that job. These guys is driving these cars full load errand into the corners and they could pay you. They're like, how does that happen?
Speaker 0 00:19:13 How does it happen?
Speaker 3 00:19:15 I never go down that route. Never helped me out.
Speaker 0 00:19:19 Well, I go talk to kids every once in a while. And like, it's about like at the high school level prior to COVID and I'm like, depending on what you want to do, you got to think out of the box. So the one thing that almost everybody puts on their, uh, like I get them to write down, what do you want to do with your free time? What are you passionate about? Try to find a job that you like doing. And more often than not people always put down traveling. I love to travel. Yeah. And I'm like, there's lots of jobs that pay you to travel. And they're just like, what are you talking about? I'm like, well, I was a recruiter and then really, okay. I was like, I got to see all of Canada and a lot of America on somebody else's dime.
Speaker 0 00:19:52 Like they paid me to travel. Like you could go work on a cruise ship. You could be a flight attendant, like truck driver, truck driver. There you go. Like, if you want to travel, like you might not go to the destination that you're thinking in your head, like a Rome or whatever. But like, if you just want to actually get out and see something different and travel, there's a lot of things out there. You just need to be like a little bit forceful about it and be a producer for a morning show. Yeah. That's right. Produce for a more show. We got to travel every once in a while. Right. So yeah. I know like, what's your, like, that's why I like having different people on, in different industries because I think now people can watch this and be like, Hey, I'm going to be sign. I didn't even know that was a thing.
Speaker 3 00:20:32 Oh exactly, man. We may inspire somebody out there today. It'd be the propane gas fitter guy.
Speaker 0 00:20:37 There you go. So on that note, we're done. I know we're over the time already because I got the watch tap a few minutes ago. But um, before I let you go, Bob, everybody, a shameless shout out or plug the lights around you, the camera's on you. The mic is on you.
Speaker 3 00:20:52 I'd say the biggest thing I want to give a shout out for is right now we're involved a lot with the community. And just the piece around Santa is anonymous. That's an amazing charity to help with. Uh, right now we're working on a campaign here for the, uh, uh, uh, uh, clothing for the, for the hope, the hope cottage or the what's it called again? The hope center. Hope. Yeah. Brain has went dead for a sec. Yeah, nobody's doing the winter drive for that, that the Sub-Zero they're working with the cruise a hundred 0.5 on that, just take a say focuses to this is a time of year. We'd really look at yourself and there's a way you can give back. Do it, just take that five minutes. Maybe look in the closet or whatever it is. Just do something to the community will make you feel so amazing.
Speaker 0 00:21:29 You go great. Shout out. All right. Before McMurry would Buffalo, the rest of the world. That's been another episode of the Mac city morning show. Thank you so much for tuning in. It does mean the world to me. I hope you're having a great day and we'll see you tomorrow. Peace.
Speaker 6 00:21:43 Oh, just dies that desk. Another Mac city warning.
Speaker 7 00:22:00 Yeah. Talk about quenching your ugly thirst.
