The home heating oil industry has a long and proud history, and Fuel Oil News has been there supporting it since 1935. It is an industry that has faced many challenges during that time. In its 77th year, Fuel Oil News is doing more than just holding
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2013 Sourcebook The 2013 Sourcebook Our annual snapshot of the industry By Keith Reid E Fuel Oil News provides its readers with its Sourcebook survey. The goal is to offer a snapshot of our readership (relative to the specific respondents that year) that represents a comparison benchmark. We received nearly 100 responses this year from a range of companies that scale from smaller dealers to some of the largest larger regional operations. While some long term trends can be observed, some major changes were recently made in the survey structure and the mix of respondents changes year to year. So, each survey should be taken on its own merits. We do provide, up front, a picture of the demographics of the specific respondent group. We comb though the data to eliminate failed survey responses. Within the accepted data, some respondents might be smaller dealer operations, and others larger marketer/wholesaler operations that are far from typical and that might only operate home heating oil delivery and service as a division of a much larger and more diversified operation. This survey is confidential and we cannot (nor would we) specifically identify the companies that provided a response, but a thoughtful look at the outliers would suggest the above assumptions are accurate. However, both the typical smaller fuel oil dealer and large regional diversified petroleum and fuel-oil specific marketers are part of the industry���s competitive landscape. For our readers��� personal comparisons, when practical, we worked to provide two sets of data: one based on the overall average for the group and another with the outliers removed. There was less this year compared to last, as this years respondents were more uniform. ach year Regional Demographics From a regional perspective, and as is typically the case, the vast majority of respondents were from the Mid-Atlantic or New England. TABLE 1 regional dispersion of the respondents NEW ENGLAND: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34% MID-ATLANTIC: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware, Washington, D.C. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53% SOUTH: Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5% MIDWEST: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7% WEST: Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1% 20 December 2012 | FUEL OIL NEWS | www.fueloilnews.com TABLE 2 Revenue Response Percent less than $1 million 11% $1 to $5 million 44% $5 to $10 million 16% $10 to $25 million 16% $25 to $50 million 4% more than $50 million 9% Revenue From a revenue standpoint (and as has been the case for several years now), the overwhelming numbers of respondents (44%) enjoy revenues between $1 million and $5 million. Some 32% had revenues between $5 and $25 million. Number of Employees The average operation for the full group featured about 21 employees. This was driven by both the very large outliers and a number of very small operations. The second figure (included in parentheses) indicates the total when the outliers (companies at least twice as large as the gross average) are removed, if different. Those numbers are similar in both cases as some of the larger operations that were culled had few technicians or drivers. TABLE 3 Number of Employees Number of employees,Number ofNumber of including yourself service technicians delivery drivers 21 (13) 4 (4) 5 (4) Number of Customers TABLE 4 Number of Customers Number of Number of commercial/Number of home-heating customers industrial customers propane customers 2,868 99 2,318 Sources of Revenue Retail fuel oil was, not surprisingly, a primary source of income for 93% of respondents. Some 30% provided bulk fuel oil and 27% provided propane service and 73% HVAC sales and service. Additional, but not listed, sources included kerosene farm