FMN: The equipment folk really have made fueling a safe experience.
Renkes: Look at pay at the pump and unattended self-service. Think about how many billions of fuelings take place in the United States a year—a flammable and/or a combustible liquid being dispensed by everybody from the 16-year-old to the 86-year-old—and we’re able to do it safely without harm to anybody and our tanks don’t leak much anymore, either. The industry has developed systems and equipment that allow the motorist to fuel efficiently without harming the air, without harming the groundwater, without harming themselves and other people around them.
FMN: How important is your staff?
Renkes: They do it all. Over the years we haven’t had much turnover. I think I’m working with 11 people here now. I think over 38 years PEI’s employed 25 or 30 total. They’re veteran. They’re good. They care about the association. They care about the members they serve. They have a heart for service and none of this stuff gets done without their help, without their leadership. I’m just around. I got lucky. Good volunteers, good customers, good members, good staff—how can you go wrong?
FMN: Tell me a little bit about the PEI Show and how you’ve seen that developed over the years, and what your feelings are on it today?
Renkes: My first show we had 171 booths in Boston. At our height during the Minneapolis show at the end of the Underground Storage Tank Program we were over 600, and then the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) grew in prominence. PEI aimed at the distributor and NACS represented the user customer, and our manufacturers that supported this show usually had to go to both shows in the fall. That led to us deciding to combine the shows.
While it hurt staff to combine shows, and it hurt some members to not have its own identity, we were able after a couple years to still keep a PEI sense of community with what we did and where we did it. When you think about the number of consolidations we’ve had in our industry I think that’s the only way PEI could have handled it. The officers and directors made the correct decision.
FMN: Which PEI show stands out the most?
Renkes: I do think one of the gutsiest things our board did was regarding our last show in Dallas, our 51st show in 2001. The board, less than three weeks after 9/11, said they were not going to be intimidated by outside influences and that the show would go on. And it did. Attendance was down. It was scary, because for most of the people it was the first time they got on a plane after 9/11, but they had enough guts to do the right thing and that was big.
We got on a conference call and we voted, and before the vote was taken somebody said, “Whatever way we vote, we’re going to have a re-vote and it will be unanimous.” That vote was 11 to 7 to hold the convention. And somebody made a motion right afterward and he said, “I vote that we unanimously as a board say we’re going to hold our convention in Dallas in September,” and we got 18 votes. That was not without a lot of soul searching and everything else.
FRM: If you had to look at the state of the industry today, what would be your gut feeling on where we stand?
Renkes: Our equipment distributors are larger than ever. Back when I came on, there was a company that maybe did $40 million and that was the largest. Now I’ve got seven or eight that do over $100 million, so I see the big getting bigger. I see the small distributors being nimble, being able to serve that customer. I have some concern for our middle-sized members that don’t have the buying power of the large ones and that aren’t as nimble as the small ones. I see the number of equipment distributors going down because of attrition, because of consolidation, because of baby boomers retiring. The same thing with manufacturers. I think we’ve peaked with the number of manufacturers we have.
The customers are getting larger or staying very small. Those middle-sized customers are going by the wayside. It is what it is. I think the industry will stay strong. People are making money. Our customers are making money. We’re still dealing with hydrocarbon fuels and we will for probably as long as I live, with a little electric and such here and there.
FMN: If you look at the association today, aside from the big picture stuff that you do with developing standards and your recommended practices and all that, what are some of the exciting member opportunities PEI has to offer today?
Renkes: We’ve established a mentoring program. We’ve established some programs to help members attract and keep service technicians, which they need in today’s world. In the 1980s we established small groups of companies that don’t compete with one another and those companies, now in their second and third generation, continue to exist today. It’s all about networking. It’s all about what your needs are, identifying those needs and not spending money needlessly, including getting rid of some programs that no longer fit their needs.
FMN: Coming into the 2016 convention, what do you think’s going to be interesting?
Renkes: I think for our rank and file member there’s going to be a lot of talk about hiring, retaining and not burning out service technicians. We’ve got big EuroPay MasterCard VISA (EMV) work to do over the next two, three and four years and technicians that know how to do all that are hard to find. And you don’t train them in six months and say go out and change this guy’s system. I think they’re going to be figuring out how soon that’s going to happen, who’s going to do it and how to keep those people. You cannot work people 70 hours a week, paying them overtime for 30 hours of that, and even if they’re making more money than they ever have, they get tired and they say that’s enough. I’d rather be a photocopy repair guy.
FMN: Do you think the EMV issue is the pressing challenge for the industry now?
Renkes: The rollout of it will be a challenge because we can’t control what our customers want to do and when they want to do it. If all the customers say we want to go with it tomorrow, we couldn’t do it. If all of our customers wait until the last week we can’t do it. It’s a monster project. There are a million dispensers out there—that’s two million sides. That’s a lot of work.
FMN: You’re not leaving for a few more months, but any thoughts about what the industry’s meant to you and what you wish for the future?
Renkes: You’d only want to wish the best for the people that you’ve come to know and care for as members and staff. I think we’re leaving PEI in a good place. I think we have a great staff going forward, and it’s not what we’ve done in the past, but what we can do in the future, and the way we’re positioned in the future. I think PEI is well-positioned with its volunteers and staff, and it will serve the industry even better than it ever has.
