KTA MOTOR CARRIER SPOTLIGHT Meet the Key Oil Safety Team Key Oil, dba Service Transport LLC, has been a leading distributor of fuels and lubricants in the southeast for over 50 years. Headquartered in Franklin, Kentucky, the company specializes in petroleum hauling and petroleum-related services, meeting the energy and fuel needs of a broad spectrum of commercial, industrial and government operations. Their customers are as diverse in size as they are in scope of activity, including local independent retail stations, gasoline and diesel fuel distributors, state and municipal agencies, power and public utility companies, and other commercial end users. Their parent company, Keystops, has five separate subsidiaries operating under its umbrella, creating a full-service package for its customers. From the construction of fuel islands and gas stations to the delivery of gas fuel and oil to turnkey environmental remediation, they do it all. At the heart of the organization is its employees. They are the most valuable asset the company has. Keeping them safe is a priority — whether it be in the office or behind the wheel. That is where David Murphy, the director of safety, and Dylan West, the safety compliance and training manager, come in. The team of two is taking a streamlined approach to safety with some amazing results. David has been in the safety business for 35 years. After leaving the Marine Corps, he started at an entry-level safety position in the garbage business, then moved over to the safety of fleet operations. David has been leading the charge on safety at Keystops for almost 12 years now. “This is my fifth location as a safety director. At each location — it could be just because of my last name and Murphy’s law — I always got the promotion and somehow inherited a mess. While in the garbage business, I went from Lakeland to Orlando and much to my dismay, the Orlando location was ranked 330 out of 333,” David recalled. “By the time I left, Orlando was in the top 10 of best locations. It was like that when I went to York, Pennsylvania, and to my surprise, Keystops had its challenges as well. In fact, before I started here, Keystops had received a couple of official warning letters from the DOT.” David got right to work, setting standards for employees to follow. “It’s simple,” David said. “We’re going to follow the law, DOT regulations and OSHA standards.” The new leadership and changes were hard to accept for some of the employees. “We had people say, ‘No, we’re not going to do that,’ and that was fine because they could go work that way for somebody else,” David recalled. The structure David implemented started to build the team and created a climate of safety. Over the years, a safety culture evolved and grew, and just got better and better. In fact, today, Keystops is anticipating that they will be in the President’s Circle in their Insurance Captive for the fourth straight year in a row. Hiring and retaining the right employees is critical to keeping the culture that has been created. “From the start, we hire employees with the hope that we can pass on knowledge to them and then they can be promotable,” David said. Dylan happened to be one of those “promotable” employees. “I had been a driver for Keystops and decided that the grass was greener somewhere else, so I put my notice in,” Dylan recalled. Needless to say, this was very disappointing for the entire Keystops team, so they took Dylan to lunch and told him to come back as soon as he was ready. “We gave him a backpack to put his stuff in and said, ‘Don’t lose it because you’re going to need it when you return,’” David said. “I remember the day I called the Keystops office because I wanted to come back to work,” Dylan said. “The manager DAVID MURPHY AND DYLAN WEST 16 | Kentucky Trucker
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