This series spotlights the amazing individuals behind the Red Ball team who display incredible acts of service and teamwork. This month, you’ll meet several team members who played a large role during the winter storms.
The 2021 winter storm ravaged the south back in February, crippling many businesses in its path. Among them were essential organizations like hospitals and power plants. To make matters worse, these businesses rely on gases to stay operational – think oxygen for COVID-19 patients in critical condition – and that gas supply was running low for many.
Queue the heroes.
Knowing our local and nearby communities were in desperate need, our team jumped into action. They faced snow packed roads topped with ice and nearly impassable delivery routes. However, that didn’t stop Brandon Swift, Jesse Cook and Marshall David. They got to work and began coordinating deliveries of our industrial gases to power plants, refineries, and hospitals. All of our territories was accounted for by our team.
What happened between our employees and our leadership was a true act of teamwork. Here’s what went down.
- Brandon, our dispatch manager, spent countless hours on the phone coordinating at the city, state, and federal levels to ensure our drivers were safe.
- Marshall, our Shreveport store manager, sourced a Bobcat to clear the yard for our trucks and forklift operators.
- Jesse, our fill plant manager, tested our bulk oxygen so our drivers could make critical deliveries.
Then, without hesitation, our drivers Kevin Gray and Robert Robinson stepped up to deliver bulk gas. The destinations: a Texas power plant and a local hospital. Ryan Davis also came in to safely escort our drivers. Both trips took days to complete because of the snow.
In those few days, we helped many more customers navigate through the storm.
- We delivered hydrogen tube trailers and cylinders to power plants in Oklahoma, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, Shreveport, East Texas, and Arkansas to keep power grids operational.
- We delivered bulk CO2 to a power plant in East Texas to prevent it from going offline and causing a widespread outage.
- We delivered bulk liquid oxygen to a hospital in Shreveport at max occupancy with COVID patients on ventilators. We also completed numerous medical oxygen deliveries in adverse conditions to hospitals in East Texas.
These are only a few snapshots of how our employees fought through ice and snow to safely deliver bulk and cylinder gases to our essential customers. We had numerous other employees meet with customers at our various Red Ball Oxygen branches to load critical cylinder gases. This proves the work we do at Red Ball not only serves our customers, but it also serves our communities.
So proud of the overall teamwork from everyone involved.
