Propane Was in Short Supply During Storm

Local propane companies experienced their busiest week in years during the recent winter storm. Rodney Sladek of Fayetteville Propane and Wendy Fietsam of Tex Propane in Schulenburg said their phones never stopped ringing during the storm as customers kept their heaters turned up.

“It was very stressful,” Fietsam said. “I kept worrying about someone running out of propane and freezing to death.”

“98 percent of our customers were very understanding,” said Sladek. “The biggest thing that helped us was our dedicated employees who went above and beyond.”

Sladek and Fietsam both said their companies worked through the weekend ahead of the record low temps that arrived on Monday, Feb. 15.

“We turned down a lot of new customers, which was sad, but we had to take care of our existing customers first,” Fietsam said.

Icy roads prevented both trucks from running that Monday and Tuesday.

“That was a crippler - having to sit for safety reasons,” Sladek said.

The companies couldn’t get deliveries from their suppliers, either. Fietsam said an electrical outage shut down a major propane terminal in Corpus Christi. At one point, Fietsam said, her company was down to just a few hundred gallons of propane left in the delivery trucks. All of their big storage tanks were empty. Drivers would deliver just enough propane to empty customers to get them through the night

“We had to ration customers for two days until our suppliers caught back up,” Sladek said.

Sladek and Fietsam both said that the price of propane from their suppliers rose by about 10 cents during the storm, which they attributed to the low supplies and increased demand. Neither company said they increased their markup on the price during the storm.

“We make the same whether the price goes up or down,” Fietsam said.

Fietsam said last week that the phones are still ringing off the hook at Tex Propane.

“Now everyone wants a generator and space heaters,” Fietsam said.

Propane generators capable of powering a home have become increasingly affordable in recent years. The historic storm is making them so popular that Fietsam said many generator companies are back ordered for months. The storm and associated power outages also revealed a weakness with central air and heat systems: even gas furnaces can’t run when the power is out Fietsam said she has been getting a lot of requests for wallmounted and floor-mounted propane space heaters, which do not need electricity to operate.