This will be sort of a rant. Enjoy.
I like people who are passionate about what they do. Passionate about anything. It could be cooking, or hiking, or painting, or mathematics.
People ask me how I got into what I do. I started a business that washes oilfield trucks in North Dakota.
This is not something I've been dreaming of my entire life. I wasn't a little kid telling my parents, "Mom, when I grow up, I want to wash trucks in North Dakota".
What I'm passionate about, is creating something. Not just creating anything, but creating value in something. I'm passionate about creating jobs for people, and about helping them feed their families. I have yet to do that, but that's what I want to do. That's the reason I packed up everything I own and drove to Minot, ND.
Someday, when this business is successful, and running on its own, I'll do it again. I'll find something interesting, and run with it.
It's hard for me to just pick one thing, and do it from start to finish, by itself. It's easy for me to see side projects, and end up doing everything all at once. I have to fight my urge to multitask.
This week, somewhere near Cydonia, North Dakota, there was a big oil spill on a well location. A crude oil truck driver was loading his truck, and fell asleep in the cab of his truck. He left the pump running.
I thin they lost about 200 barrels on the ground. A barrel is about 42 gallons. That's a lot of crude oil.
Normally, they'd bring a crew of people and equipment out to clean up the mess. After thousands of dollars in soil testing, they then have to excavate the soil that has been soaked through with crude oil.
I was with one of the dispatchers for this trucking company as he was talking to the company manager about the spill.
I told him about some chemicals I was familiar with. I'm talking about Probiological Remediation.
Instead of digging up the whole area with heavy equipment, trucking all of the soil to a disposal facility, we can spray a special kind of bacteria onto the spill. This bacteria eats the oil, and leaves only water, and CO2.
This is much cheaper than all the traditional stuff. It's better for the environment. It's awesome. And it's what I hope we can start doing, in coordination with the whole power washing idea. Who knew I'd be such an environmentalist? (Okay, that's really a stretch. But there is money to be made in helping the environment)
If this trucking company tries it, and likes it, then it can be a foot in to selling chemicals to EOG resources. If we get in with EOG resources (which I think we will), we'll also have all 600 oil wells to clean up and take care of. That would be my retirement. :)
Anyway, that was kind of a tangent, but something I've been thinking about during most of my waking hours.
Here are some photos of yesterday's work! It was a great day!
Starting with an after photo, I guess.
Before...
Me, doing something.
So I hooked up this whole strange contraption. The machine in the back of the truck is hooked up to the generator, and the main water tank on the trailer. It was kind of a spur of the moment design, but it's what I do when I roll out of bed.
A Beautiful North Dakota sunset.
Love that you're LIVING with such grace! I'm working towards that end...daily life (i.e. mortgage, the everyday job, etc) seems to get in the way of living how I've imagined. Still trying to figure out how to help keep a roof over our heads & "live the dream" (at least mine anyway).
ReplyDelete(My) Greg (aka G$) intro'd me to the incredibly diverse & interesting world of eco-friendly engineering. It's so incredible to me that there are such easy, reasonable & helpful ways that we as Americans can realign with methods that are safer & more helpful for our environment...and still offer the same benefits we've come to expect, if not better, and we're actually NOT doing them! It makes me shake my head that even though we're a country the world looks to, there are so many other countries that are waaaaaaay ahead of us in this respect.