UTLX On-Site® Mini-Shop Stars In BP Asphalt Safety Video

UTLX Whiting, Indiana Mini-Shop Supervisoris a supporting “actor” in a new training

DVD shot on location at BP’s dedicated repair facility.

On the job, Wes Mayfield is hardly accustomed to being the center of attention. His realm, a UTLX dedicated repair mini-shop in the center of one of the nation’s largest refineries (see sidebar), doesn’t get many visitors.

Now, Mayfield’s “star” is on the rise as both he and the repair shop appear in RailSmart, a new safety video from BP’s North American Asphalt division. The video, which highlights key focal

areas for safe asphalt unloading, was shot entirely on location at the UTLX On-Site® mini-shop within BP’s Whiting, Indiana refinery. Wes plays himself, a railcar main-tenance professional, discussing a rail car issue with a customer over the phone.

“The shop was ideal for videotaping everything we wanted to show, from working on the top platform to steaming the car,” ex-plains Jane Emmerth, BP’s asphalt

scheduling manager. “And Union Tank Car was most cooperative in halting operations for a very long day of shooting.”

Normally, the mini-shop staff is busy maintaining and repairing asphalt tank cars, and the occasion-al sulfur car or propylene car. “It’s appropriate that the video crew shot a car steaming, since coil pipes are one of our most frequent repairs,” says Mayfield. Also high on the list is replacing decals in order to maintain visibility and legibility.

Emmerth reports that hav-ing a UTLX mini-shop right in the BP refinery is a major logistics

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Quiet on the set... Wes Mayfield, ULTX mini-shop supervisor, poses for the camera while discussing a tank car issue with a customer.

Wes explains how heater pipes work to BP HSSE Coordinator Scott Williams, who “starred” in the production portraying a tank car unloader.

advantage. “Asphalt is sometimes hot and sticky, sometimes cold and hard, and this product can really punish a railroad tank car,” she notes. “The On-Site® repair ca-pability is great because cars are inspected as they come in, and the UTLX crew can do any necessary maintenance and repairs imme-diately - before a car is loaded. It gives us confidence in our fleet, and helps us prevent shipping out a car that may be bad-ordered later by the railroad. UTLX helps us keep our fleet in good running condition, and our customer shipments more timely. That’s huge.”

Mayfield adds that his new-found celebrity status has not gone to his head and that he and his fellow UTLX crew members stand as ready as ever to help keep BP’s asphalt tank car shipments on the fast track.

The mini shop at the Whiting, Indiana refinery is designed so the crew can work on multiple cars at one time - inside out of the weather.

now owned by BP is the fourth largest refinery in the U.S., and the oldest continuously-operating one in the world. It was here that the petroleum “cracking” pro-cess was pioneered thus enabling mass-production of gasoline. That process helped usher in the auto-motive age.

The mini-shop itself is housed in a venerable brick build-ing believed to be about 100 years old. Its original purpose is uncer-tain and once-plentiful window spaces have since been filled in, but the structure now provides a rock solid, all-weather facility that can handle several railcars under roof at once.

The UTLX Whiting mini-shop stands on some of the most hal-lowed ground in the oil industry. Originally launched on Thanksgiv-ing Day of 1890 by Standard Oil’s John D. Rockefeller, the facility

Standing the Test of Time