An Oil Delievery

About three years ago our local oil delievery company, Johnson Dix, was sold to Irving Oil which was then a Canadian company and is now a HUGE Canadian Company. Johnson was an old family owned and run oil company, popular and large by Vermont standards that prided itself on customer service and was known as a great place to work. Irving on the other hand is so large that one must deal with call centers and voice mail menues to reach a contact and then everything is scheduled far in advance in an albeit polite but inpersonal distant way. The modern age. Life has gone on, oil is delievered in good weather and bad. But its not the same and everyone knows it.

This is background for my experience this morning.

Putting my winter boots on on our porch I saw a strange oil truck coming in our drive way. Dave, our normal driver, who has delivered our oil for as long as I can remember was not at the wheel. Also Dave has a huge beautifully maintained truck that is his home. He loves "his truck" and cares for absolutely everything. Its stunning to see and his attitudes in his work reflect his feelings about his truck. In a long conversation one Sunday morning during a delievery he confided that he had been on our route long before we bought Meadow. He does much of his work on weekends since he also works as a caretaker to several large homes North of us here in Vermont. His customers are in residence most weekends in the winter so his caretaking tasks mostly do not conflict with his oil delievery responibilities. While Dave is by no means a young man....I'd say in his mid 50's, he looks great, he is enthuised, energised, likes his job and you can tell is a guy who is just comfortable in his existance. I liked Dave. Any customer who met him had to. I'd not see him most times that he came ... but when I did we'd always exchange a few nice greetings.

As I said in the beginning....today's delievery was not being made by Dave...a strange truck was in the driveway.... and a stranger was dragging the hose to the oil pipes.

"Good Morning" says the middleaged thin crusty looking driver. He was bent over the oil pipes leading to the oil tank in the cellar by the time I got my boots on. "Good Morning" I replied. "What happened to Dave. He usually delievers my oil in his huge truck." "Oh, you must mean Dave Adams... he's delievering propane this year. He got upset when these new guys (a reference to the new oil company Irving) took his truck away from him. Sent the truck somewhere South to Massachussets. You know we don't have very many great tucks and Dave thought he'd be happier in a propane truck so he's got a new route and is doing that. Many of us are haveing difficulty adjusting to the new guys....it's much larger and not as personal as it used to be. You know once I had a business before I started this and I try to develope a relationship of sorts with the customers on my route but its hard today cause we don't always work the same route."

"That's interesting" I replied. By this time he was dragging the hose back to the truck and yelled back to me..."I'll bring you a ticket in a minute."

"Oh by the way" he exclaimed as he handed me the ticket "I put a new label on your pipe. We don't always work the same routes under our new systems so there is no telling who is going to make your delievery. They have us putting these new labels on all the tanks so its clearer for us to be sure we are at the tank we are supposed to be at. It's a big problem when we put oil in the wrong tank...for every one. Dave wouldn't have needed this in the old days. Why he could almost tell you the birthdays of the kids in the families he delieverd to. Nope...just not the same today. Got to run. Good seeing you."

I was sad about Dave. I hate hearing things like this. I walked over to the oil pipe to have a look at the new label. It was there. For some reason I reached out to see if the oil cap had been tightened. It hadn't been.

I don't have a name for this new driver. Guess I don't need one but that doesn't mean he didn't leave me with an impression of what it means to be one of the new guys.

December 2009