About Oil Butler
This is where I tell you how smart I am for coming up with the mobile oil change concept more than 20 years ago. Well instead I will share the facts with you and you will see I was forced into it almost against my will.
Looking at The Market Place
My first thought was to find a mobile oil change van and send it to them. Back then as today there were several companies who built mobile oil change vehicles. I was thrilled. All I had to do was supply them with the info and bingo I was done with this problem, so I thought. All the companies who built vehicles did the same thing. I never noticed it as I was not in the business, but when Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant executives took the Oil change vehicles I sent them to committee everything changed, they came up with many reasons why they would not allow any of these vehicles on their property. I wish I kept the letter, but I did not. This is what I remember from the findings of the power plant.
- Dangerous Air Compressor: The air compressor was sitting inside a motorized vehicle and which is a major fire hazard. Filling the gas tank every day will increase the risk of fire by the inevitable little spills inherent to filling a small gas tank with a gas container; further compounding this was the exhaust being discharged in the vehicle.
- Bad working condition: Climbing in and out of the back and or side of the van on your knees was unacceptable to their union.
- Oil evacuation: Some of the mobile oil change conversion companies advocated sucking oil out of the dip stick. They investigated this and to my surprise every single auto manufacturer then and still today states that sucking the oil out of a dip stick voids the engine warrantees. The findings were that it leaves 20% of the old oil remain in the oil pan and all the sludge. Of course later we learned that you have to go under the vehicle to take out the oil filter and you can drain the oil from the pan in about 30 seconds as opposed to sucking it out of the dip stick in 10 minutes.
- Leaky design: Then there were the oil tanks with the oil reel sitting on top of them. They quickly demonstrated a problem with this. The oil reels have a shut off on the end of the gun. By turning it you can close the oil off, the reality of oil is it is oil and the guns have 400+ pounds of oil in them and just sitting on top of the oil tanks swinging in the wind is not safe and will leak a few drops every single day regardless of how careful you are. Actually one of the managers asked me to visit the office one rainy day and he dropped a few drops of oil on a wet parking lot. It spread out into a rainbow circle instantly and was about 24 inches across. He asked me how would I explain that to anyone?
- Draining Oil Filters: they wanted to know how these vans were going to drain 30 to 40 oil filters during the day and dispose of them. None of the vehicles allowed for that.
- Insurance: Additionally when the power plant consulted with their insurance company, they could not get insurance for a van filled with gas, filled with used and new oil all sitting next to a running fire breathing gas air compressor.
The list went on and on. As I read it my heart sank. All I could think about was that I had to build something to keep them happy. Keeping major players like the Arizona Power Plant happy is not easy. They are not your average guy who likes the idea and goes with it. They have committees and look at every angle. So we started designing a perfect vehicle to change oil.
We toyed around with a few ideas and came up with a mobile oil change van. The first one was very impressive. At the time my partner (Dom Lege) and I owned a boat company (we are still partners).We manufactured a few small Boston Whaler type boats with foam filled hulls. We took a Ford van to the boat company and cut the back off the van, all we left was the cab. We then made a fiberglass mold and made a very impressive looking van, office in the rear, huge gull wing door on the side for service, large oil tanks, multiple grades of oil, retractable hoses for oil, water, antifreeze, windshield fluid and air. It was a work of art if I must say so myself. It answered all the concerns of the Power Plant and more.
Our first presentation of the van was when we took it to the company office at lunch time. The employees were going to lunch and as we showed the executives a crowd gathered around the truck and we were literally pushed back. Soon the question came from the employees at the company “when you are doing the fleet oil changes can you do my car,” then another request and another and bingo the company was born. Several things happened after that, but that is the short version. See “what separates us” for how we resolved all the concerns from the corporate customers.