Yesterday, I had the opportunity to tag along on a road trip as we dropped our new hardbander off at our West Virginia location, and I figured I'd write a blog post (two, actually) about it to give you a little bit of a look at what we do down on the country roads, since most of it is a little bit different from what we're doing in Ohio.
By the way, I talked a little bit about our hardbander and what it does when we first got it, so I won't go too in depth on those points, but obviously, I encourage you to check that post out for a broader understanding of the process, and why you should contact us right this second to get your pipe reinforced at its weakest point. We'll get hitched up and ready to go while we're waiting for you to get back.
We have a trained truck driver on staff, Dustin (many of you know him already, he does inside sales and leads our office in received phone calls), so he's doing the hard part of this whole excursion. Quick story: the one time in my entire life that I drove something with a trailer, I was probably 17 and broke the trailer before even leaving the parking lot when I wrapped it on a fence. It was a boat trailer, my dad and brother launched the boat, I was supposed to bring the trailer back. I begged my dad to not make me do it with tears in my eyes, I was terrified, he made me do it anyway, but the joke was on him after he had to pay to fix the axle on someone else's boat trailer. So that's why Dustin is driving.
Anyway, with nothing better to do, I decided to channel my inner 20-year-old girl as we drove through some northern Ohio farmland with this photo. I actually did post it on our Instagram story yesterday (cheap plug: @summitsalesequipment).
For the record, the trip between our Wooster, Ohio and Bridgeport, West Virginia locations takes about 3 hours, 30 minutes and covers about 200 miles. However, we burned about 400 miles worth of gas pulling that thing though, since it's somehow even heavier than it looks, with an awkward weight distribution. Thanks for the supply, Marcellus and Utica Shale plays. The ride was a little rough to say the least - I'm not even joking, it counted as 8,000 steps on my pedometer.
Oh hey, we're there already, so you didn't have to deal with any of that. Our Bridgeport presence is actually two separate properties a couple miles apart from each other on the edge of town. Today, we'll take a look at, well, our inspection facility. Like the sign says. It's where we inspect drill pipe and where we're leaving the hardbander today, because pipe is what gets hardbanded and the place with all the pipe is where you should leave something like that.
By the way, when I say "all the pipe," I'm not really messing around.
This one too.
Yeah, so most of the facility is just a big lot filled with stacks and stacks of pipe. It's a lot of pipe. Make your own jokes, this is a family blog. But it would probably be a bad thing if there wasn't any pipe there, since we have this land and all of these employees and stuff that we're paying for.
As you might expect or know, pipe is big and heavy, so here's how we move it around. A lot of you guys are industry lifers and maybe used to all of the big machinery. But me? I still have a kid inside that thinks all of this stuff is just so freaking cool. I wish I was allowed to play with it. I truly feel bad for you if that's not the case. There's only one photo here obviously, but I took enough of this thing to make a flipbook or a gif, probably around 100. Maybe I actually will, watch our social media for that one I guess.
So where is he moving the pipe? Glad you asked.
Here's an overview of where the inspecting part of inspection actually takes place. It's a little bit of a manual conveyor belt running through the shelter structure there.
Look at me masterfully weaving logo hits into two of those three photos. Marketing, kids. I got a little closer for a couple of action shots of the guys at work. Just a couple though, otherwise it gets weird.
At this particular juncture of the process, they're pulling what's called a drift through the pipes just to make sure it isn't smashed in or sustained some other damage that would it prevent it from, you know, being a pipe and doing what a pipe is supposed to do. You can see the drift sticking out of the end in that second picture. They're also greasing the things up pretty good.
Dustin and I weren't about to stick around and bill the company a couple hotel nights for a simple drop-off mission, so unfortunately I didn't get to watch us perform a complete inspection, but here's a nice video that shows off most of the standard services we offer at a place that looks a lot like our place. Use your imagination.
With all of that out there, it's time to say farewell to the hardbander, which will be pressed into service very soon. Number's right there on the truck if you need it, hint hint. If email's more your thing, we have this too.
However, we're not quite ready to say farewell to West By God Virginia just yet. In our next post, we'll head over to our other site and take a look at our iron re-certification and part sales operations. Sound good? Perfect, see you then.
Have a very Good Friday,
