With the popularity of smart phones and tablets increasing daily, OPW is excited to announce the availability and launch of the new OPW Mobile Website. iPhone and Android phones and devices will be automatically redirected to the mobile site when visiting www.opwglobal.com. The mobile site can also be accessed by going to www.opwglobal.com/mobile.

Once you have entered the mobile website, you'll have quick access to key functions and useful reference information:

• Contact OPW – Provides quick access to contact information for OPW Technical Support, Customer Service and Product Sales
• Distributor Locator – Quickly find an OPW distributor around ...

Way back in 2004, discussions began for a new permanent seaplane terminal as part of a project to expand the size of a convention center to 1.2 million square feet in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia. A new seaplane facility was needed because the existing one was old and antiquated, and was having an increasingly difficult time meeting the existing standards for operation. Fast-forward eight years and the dream of that new seaplane terminal has become a reality.

To devise an efficient fuel-delivery system for the upgraded facility, creative thinking was needed. Because the design of the facility needed ...

Meet Brandon Grote, OPW District Manager & Product Specialist

What's your current role at OPW?
Grote: I recently changed roles to District Manager and Product Specialist. As a District Manager, I will be covering Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Michigan for all of OPW products. I am also a Product Specialist for all Above Ground Products, and will assist my fellow District Managers where needed. This change is all coming after many years with OPW. I started in March of 2000 as an Engineering Co-Op. I became a full-time Design Engineer/Assistant Product Manager in 2002. Then I started a long stint ...

As every college basketball fan knows, the 2012 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship kicked off a few days ago and March Madness is officially underway. This year's tournament is projected to be one of the best in many years, and not just because of the talent on the court. It has also been predicted to be one of the most followed athletic events in recent memory, with the availability of new technology and the popularity of social media outlets playing a key role in this prediction.

Just as the tournament itself has evolved over the years, so too has the way ...

It has been a long accepted fact of life for station operators around the world that some amount of saleable gasoline will be lost either during the fueling process in the form of vapour escaping into the atmosphere, or during the delivery process when recoverable vapours are returned to the tank of the oil company's delivery trucks. Estimates vary, but it's safe to say that expected vapour losses are between .25 and .35 percent of sales volume.

Aside from the economic price that is paid when the station operator does not adequately recover vapours, there is also an environmental component ...

Every year about this time, thousands of convenience store owners and key decision makers descend upon Las Vegas for the WPMA National Convention & Convenience Store Expo. Taking place from Feb. 21-23, at the Mirage Hotel, the 2012 WPMA Expo will bring together nearly 4,000 petroleum marketers and exhibitors representing over 165,000 convenience stores.

This year's WPMA Expo will be filled with a variety of networking opportunities, new products and trends, and speakers and workshops. One of the key attractions will be the keynote speaker - author and actor Ben Stein, best known for his iconic role in "Ferris Bueller's ...

Whether your commercial fueling operation is large or small, many operations have vehicles coming and going all the time. With so much activity, it often becomes difficult for fueling operators to properly track inventory, allocate expenses, monitor deliveries and prevent theft. 

Take a college campus for instance…

College campuses are constantly being cared for and patrolled by a fleet of vehicles – vans and buses to transport students to events and teams to games; police cars to patrol the campus to keep students safe; lawnmowers, gators and skid loaders to perform routine ground maintenance; trucks to haul workers from job ...

As we continue to move deeper into the winter season, we know that extreme cold and brutal weather is sure to follow. In dealing with this weather, people have to make concessions to the climate and adapt to the conditions in order to survive. Fueling site operators are no exception. Vehicle breakdowns or the inability to access fuel can quickly turn into a disaster.

All components involved in a vehicle’s operation are put under extreme stress when operating in harsh conditions. This goes for the equipment that is used to put fuel into the vehicle’s gasoline or diesel tanks, as ...

As the temperatures begin to drop heading into the winter months, petroleum retailers should be aware of an increase in the potential dangers of static electricity-caused fires at the gas pump. While temperatures decrease, the amount of moisture in the air also decreases causing a greater possibility of static discharge. Under normal conditions, static discharge is purely an annoyance for everyone. However, if an employee or customer is in close proximity to a vehicle refueling at the pump island, the chance for fuel vapors to ignite from static discharge is a potential hazard.

Motorists refuel their cars many times per ...

Part one of this series discussed some of that problems that can occur when dealing with an unprotected fueling site and how fuel management systems can be used as an effective solution to maintain, control, monitor and track fuel inventories, purchases and transactions for fleets and unattended fueling sites. The three types of fuel management systems were previously discussed. Now let’s take a closer look at single and multi-site card lock systems.

Single and multi-site card lock systems consist of four main features:

• Fuel site controller
• Fuel management software
• Reconciliation
• RFID

Single & Multi-card Lock Systems Set The Standard

The ...

From the smallest fleets to the largest petroleum marketing operations in the world, every fueling operation is in need of an effective solution that will provide complete security, accountability and control. Theft, misallocation of fuel, inaccurate record keeping and the inability to control fuel restrictions are all results that can occur when a site is left unattended.

With the current economic conditions, fuel theft has become a real issue. Not only can it occur by outsiders who enter your location without authorization, but also fuel theft occurs among employees if they are dispensing fuel into an unauthorized, non-company vehicle. Relying ...

While featuring many of its industry leading fueling equipment products and services for the petroleum industry, OPW was able to create one of its largest show presences in recent memory at this year's NACS Show. Visitors to the NACS Show, which was held from October 1-4 in Chicago, IL, were able to interact with OPW representatives in a newly designed booth and receive some valuable hands-on demonstrations of OPW products. Some of the key OPW products featured at this year's show included:

• The Industry's First CARB-Certified AST EVR Solution
• PetroLink™…the latest Non-Intervention Fuel Control Innovation
• Next-Generation Underground Solutions...

It’s that time of year again…time to begin gearing up for the PEI Convention at the NACS Show (NACS Show). Taking place October 1-4 in Chicago, this year’s NACS Show will feature more than 1,200 exhibitors providing the most comprehensive representation of products and services for the convenience industry.

• View additional NACS Show details 
• View the NACS Show interactive floor plan

Maximize Your Visit To The NACS Show

Last year, more than 22,000 people attended the NACS Show from 65 countries, proving that retail businesses around the world are still allocating significant dollars to attending trade shows. ...

By now, every trucker and fleet owner knows that Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) is being used to control diesel engine emissions in order to meet EPA tailpipe emission standards. By passing these new regulations, the EPA created a whole new market in the nation's motor-vehicle fueling industry, with DEF on the verge of becoming a multi-million dollar a year segment.

Although volume estimates vary, there is no question that the demand for DEF will grow in future years, with some estimates putting total DEF consumption in the U.S. at more than 600 million gallons by 2015. With projections ...

A century after being founded, Dead River Company, Portland, Maine, has become one of the largest distributors of petroleum products to retail and commercial customers in northern New England – particularly throughout the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Of course, this success didn’t happen by accident, and didn’t come overnight. It was the result of sensing a shift in existing market dynamics, identifying new opportunities, and then having the fortitude and wherewithal to move the company in new directions.

As part of this wherewithal, Dead River aggressively adopts new technologies to improve operations. For instance, Dead River ...

While the days of cars and trucks belching black clouds of exhaust and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) into the atmosphere are long gone, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continually looks for ways to keep the air as clean as possible. One of its major focuses is on the number and amount of HAPs that may be produced at gasoline-dispensing facilities (GDFs). Not only the vapors that are produced during the fueling process, but those that are created when delivery trucks are unloading their gasoline or diesel shipments into a petroleum site's storage tanks, whether it be an attended or unattended ...

If you happen to take a drive through Cedar Falls, IA, a university town of nearly 40,000 residents on the banks of the Cedar River, you would be hard-pressed not to observe the work of the Public Works Department’s Fleet Maintenance crew. See that young man maintaining the grounds at City Hall? His lawnmower is powered by gasoline from the Fleet Maintenance Department’s fuel depot. That police car headed to the fender-bender at Main Street and Waterloo Road? Just had an oil change performed by Fleet Maintenance. How about that snowplow clearing the city’s streets? Fueled by Fleet Maintenance....

In today's hyper competitive world, everyone is looking for a way to gain a competitive edge. Providing a positive customer experience and projecting a quality brand image represents two of the most effective ways to attract and retain customers, and gain their long-term loyalty.

When it comes to operating a fueling site, your dispensing system, and in particular your fueling nozzles, represent the most frequent handshake you have with your customers. Ensuring that you are always delivering a quality, reassuring handshake begins by having the best quality equipment at this critical customer touch point. It is important to remember ...

Unless you are old enough to remember, until the early 1950s there were no automatic fuel nozzles in use at gas stations. Drivers would pull their car into the station and the attendant would rush out to fill the gas tank, which involved inserting the nozzle and holding it open until the tank was full. Since automatic shut-off of the nozzles was not an option, no time could be spent washing windows or checking fluid levels, resulting in a relatively long refueling process.

However, this all changed when in 1949 Leonard H. Duerr, an engineer for OPW invented a 3-ball ...

Purpose

At OPW, we've been known for our One Company. One World. One Source™ slogan for quite some time now. Personally, we like our slogan and feel it sums up OPW's evolution and efforts over the past few decades. However, we'd like to revise that slightly to add "One Voice" as another key element to our effort moving forward. You see, the world is rapidly changing and global communications are at an all-time high. With the growth of smartphones and various other communication technologies available today, the importance of instant two-way communication has never been greater.  

With this ...