A Heating Season for the Records

Published on Thursday, February 8, 2018 in Propane

2018 came in like a lion as Mother Nature hit hard and fast, sending much of the country into an early deep freeze and causing many propane retailers to raise their prices as they scrambled for supply.

This heating season has been one for our record books, and we're still trudging along. From November through the early part of January we delivered about 500,000 more gallons of propane than we planned. In January alone we delivered 907,194 gallons. It was a record January, and we were one delivery driver short for the month. Kudos to our hard-working operations team, who faced brutal conditions and worked long days and many Saturdays to make sure our customers stayed cozy and comfortable.

Most wholesale propane is trucked through a national transport delivery system, and the increased demand strained that already fragile system. Fortunately most of our supply is stored right here in Michigan, a great advantage of our approach to service.

Supply is one important factor that differentiates us from the competition. Capped-rate pricing is another.

We started to see the slow and steady increase in competitor pricing way back in October, long before the temperatures took their seasonal nosedive. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports the average retail price of propane in Michigan was $1.88 per gallon in early October. That quickly escalated to $2.21 per gallon by late January. It's a predictable pattern among most propane retailers: as temperatures decrease, gas prices increase.

We established our 2017-2018 capped rate of $1.599 per gallon back in May 2017, and will hold that price until May 31, 2018. That rate is provided without additional fees or charges; it's the way we've done business for nearly 20 years and the reason we are now 6400 customers strong.

We don't sell just a commodity; we provide peace of mind and stability in the midst of volatility, and it's one of the many reasons our customers stick around and trust us as their propane partner.

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