 |
||
 |
Current Issue | Past Issues | Contact Us | Advertising | www.pei.org | |
 |
|
|
Savage AssociatesNew Jersey-based company takes creative design/build solutions to world markets.Brian Savage and his younger brother Greg grew up around innovation and hard work. Their father, John, got up each day at 5:30 a.m. and woke his adolescent-aged sons with the words, “Let's go, it's time to go to work.” Brian Savage, now president of the company his father founded in 1938, remembers those early morning drives with his father. He learned that solving problems for customers was hard, creative work and required intense commitment to thinking outside the box. He learned that it also required dedication to learning about an industry, its customers and their needs, and creating a place for unique solutions to market growth. And he learned that the petroleum equipment industry would be an outlet for his own passion and creativity.
The innovation and spirit of hard work passed down from father to sons is a force of Savage Associates today. Consistently named a Top Distributor by its suppliers, Savage Associates remains committed to its founder's ideal: Create solutions to help customers grow their business. Brian Savage says, “I learned as a young boy that no day is the same in this business. And that's the beauty of our industry. Every day is another opportunity to create a solution.” Headquartered in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Savage Associates comprises four different companies, including Petro Chem Technologies, specializing in loading arm transfer systems, liquid/vapor petrochemical storage metering, and pumping equipment based on a total systems approach to equipment supply. Design and Build
Over the next few decades, John Savage had his hand in the development and supply of many industry firsts, including the design and installation of the world's first bottom loading facility (200 gpm) at a Shell Oil plant in Indiana, the first design for under wing refueling, a spring-loaded control valve for the undercarriage of liquid transports, a hydraulic control valve, and the first carbon adsorption/absorption gasoline recovery system for the Phillips Oil Co. In the 1960s, John Savage built one of three major electronic grounding devices in the world (STSW-300-G2). When Brian Savage joined the company full time in 1972, Savage Associates had evolved into an engineering support company serving the petrochemical, pharmaceutical and food industries. It was during the 1980s that Savage Associates found a niche market that would eventually total 40 percent of the company's business—aviation fueling. The U.S. Air Force needed those loading arms that John Savage helped design. Sales evolved over the years and now the company provides all the components that have to do with the storage and transfer of jet fuel, including filters, meters, pump stations and gauging stations. Today, Savage Associates is one of only two companies in the United States that is a single system supplier for the U.S. Air Force's hydrant 3 fueling stations. Military Installations Savage Associates has an office in the United Arab Emirates, whose primary function is to serve the support needs of the United States military in the Middle East. The Air Force Command Post is located in Riyad, Saudi Arabia, but soon will be moving to the country of Qatar. Savage Associates installed a six-million-gallon storage facility for jet fuel, along with a fueling system for transport fuel loading trucks. Savage describes the project: “This was supposed to be a temporary solution until 27 kilometers of pipeline were installed. The completion of that pipeline has been delayed for two years now, because of political reasons. So they're loading just shy of a billion gallons of jet fuel a week, driving it 27 kilometers across the air base and putting it into the storage facility.”
“When dealing with governments, delays are inevitable,” Savage points out, and he remembers to stay calm, creative and consistent, especially when the military forgets to do regular, preventative maintenance on equipment, the way civilian customers do. He describes a situation at two bases in Afghanistan where three- and four-inch fuel meters were breaking down. “The defense fuel people are finally starting to understand the need for regular maintenance checks.” In the meantime, Savage is sending his employees to Afghanistan, where they'll stay for three weeks to do the repair work and educate the customer—again. “We do what it takes,” Savage says. “This is another opportunity to create a solution.” In addition to not paying attention to the needs of equipment, security clearance presents another challenge when doing government work. During Bill Clinton's presidency, Savage Associates was awarded a contract to do a job at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. The driving range installed by President Eisenhower when he built Camp David also served as a landing area for the presidential helicopters. The original fueling system was still in operation, above ground. “President Clinton kept hitting it with a golf ball,” notes Savage. A new, below-grade system was installed, with a hydraulic lift raising the hose reel to fuel the helicopters. And it would be out of the First Golfer's target range! When a swing joint broke, it took two weeks for company employees to be cleared to get into Camp David to do the repair. Global Markets After finishing a fueling project at the Sahara Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, the company was approached to do two large petroleum storage projects for Capital Oil in Lagos. Seeing the local work done by Savage Associates, a Nigerian prince hired the company to build three helicopter fueling stations at his palace. Other projects have been installed in Korea, Oman, Egypt, Uganda and Venezuela. More are on tap overseas, including a four-year project updating two airports in Central America and one in Romania. Equipment is shipped overseas by boat (except in the case of the Nigerian prince, who offered to pay for faster air shipment) from the United States, pre-assembled and packaged on skids and placed in containers. Everything is piped, wired and pre-tested before shipping. Says Savage, “Upon arrival, the customer connects his supply line to the system, hooks up his power to our control panel, and starts working.” A Savage Associates team arrives to assist with start-up and maintenance.
Preventative Maintenance And you need to make sure that his equipment will not break down. Savage is stoked by preventative maintenance. “I scream and shout about it,” he says, “and will continue to do so until customers realize how important it is.” He conducts regular seminars on the topic for fuel distributors and storage plant workers. He starts off by asking everyone in the room with a TV or appliance in their house that is 10 years old to raise their hands. Hands start dropping when he asks who still has an appliance older than 20 years. By the time he gets to 30, no hands are up. Then he ask this question: “How do you think the pump or meter out there in your petroleum plant that is over 30 years of age is going to continue to work for the rest of its life?” Dead silence, then nods of understanding. Savage is on a mission to teach the importance of regular, preventative maintenance and to update equipment. “We have problems when people want a part for a meter that has not been made for 20 years!” Military contracts require Savage Associates to sell specific products to the military, but not to the civilian customer. So Savage has come up with a unique solution to this dilemma. He calls it “teaming up.” “Sometimes we go into a job where we can't provide the pump, but we can provide the meter. We find a local distributor who can provide that pump. Instead of competing with each other, we go in as a team. Both of us bring the best of our products to the project and, in the end, the client gets the best of both. It works out tremendously for everybody.”
A Family Affair This hard work has paid off for the Savage family. Now in its third generation, Brian's son Mark Savage joined the company as inside sales manager and works alongside his mother Cindy Savage, the company's chief financial officer; Brian's brother Greg, vice president; and Greg's wife Sharon, who heads up defense fuel supply. The family is truly having fun working together in different markets for civilian and military customers. Upstream is where they want to be. John Savage, the founder of the company now run by his sons, is 95 years old and lives in the UK, in North Wales. The creativity, passion and hard work of those early morning car rides have been passed down. The car rides, though, are now airplane rides to customers throughout the world, a wonderful twist of fate given the success of the Savage family in the aviation fueling business. |
||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
