COMPANY profile
have burner licenses on both the oil and
propane side so we can schedule them on
installations in the summertime. We've
been able to manage it well and we've been
able to attract people that are willing to get
their various licenses."
DOC's diversification carries into its
retail gasoline division as well. Out of
the eight locations the company operates, only three have convenience stores.
Two of those are mini-marts and one is
a larger C-store format. One is a gasoline
unit that is a "pumper" with just a kiosk
and two islands set out in front of one
of the heating oil offices. DOC operates
a carwash at five of the locations with
one unit maintaining an automobile fullservice bay.
The major issue with diversification for
the company has been on the HVAC side
relative to the time required for the various technician training programs, which
has only increased as the company moved
into propane, wood pellets, air conditioning and heat pumps.
"The HVAC side has been a bit more
of a challenge for us as we bring our technicians up to the level of efficiency and
accuracy that they need to be at," said
Vaillancourt. "We are there now, but we
are always tweaking." As touched on earlier, that issue was certainly in play with
the move to propane, even though in concept there are many similarities.
"It's a completely different code
in terms of the regulations," said
Vaillancourt. "We've had a strong service
department for many years and they all
grew up on the oil side and are very good.
But on the propane side, installation and
service is very different and technical. Our
biggest challenge was to bring our people
to a level where we and they were comfortable with the propane equipment that we
are installing and servicing. We invested
in a tremendous amount of training and
incurred a large expense to get ourselves
up to speed."
For all of the challenges involved with
running a business as diversified as DOC,
going that route was unavoidable. It is
increasingly a challenge for the traditional
oil dealer to continue without some diver-
sification, but that challenge only increases
with the geography where the company
does its business. Vaillancourt noted that
northern Maine is sparsely populated and
the fairly large county in which DOC conducts business has a population of less
than 70,000 people.
"In order to be able to survive here,
for a company of any size, you need to
be doing different things," he said. "It's
always a challenge to do them well. As a
customer focused company, we continue
to operate and build our business with the
customer in mind." l F O N
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