Customer Impressed with Team Members’ Expertise, Dedication to Safety

When the customer’s new safety manager unexpectedly dropped by the Tioga Dedicated Terminal, Watco team members Sergio Mohammed and Justin Haisch stopped what they were doing to show him operations.

The safety manager arrived after Watco Terminal Manager Daniel Harkness and Supervisor Eric Turner had left for the day. Meanwhile, Mohammed and Haisch were loading natural gas liquids (NGLs) into railcars.

Turner said, “They stopped what they were doing to give him a tour of the facility. And when they returned to the NGL rack, Sergio and Justin provided a step-by-step overview of the loading process.”

Mohammed and Haisch took time to answer all his questions, including one on whip checks, after he noticed all railcars featured secondary hose securements. They explained this mitigation measure was created after an incident in 2019, when a hose became untethered from a railcar.

“Sergio and Justin took the time to go over the reasoning behind every process,” said Turner. “They are both great examples of Watco’s customer-first Foundation Principle.”

The safety manager only had positive words to describe his recent site visit. In an email to Harkness and Turner, he said it was “awesome to hear the operators talk through mitigations that are in place due to previous incidents. That is a great cultural indicator of lessons learned by the team.”