BP's Gulf Underwater Oil Leak Causing Havoc For Environmental Containment Equipment Industry

Over the years, before my retirement I was a franchisor and occasionally noted that when there were big hurricanes our company was unable to get the equipment we needed because the inventories shifted and the manufacturers were caught off guard and ran out of equipment - due to the fact that such equipment was needed for FEMA or for hurricane disaster cleanups.

You see, my company was involved in the mobile cleaning of vehicles, and we franchised these mobile units around the country to do services. Each vehicle had several machines on it, and each of those machines had small motors. After a large earthquake, or hurricane all of the small mortars were used for portable generators. And therefore the small motors were unavailable for the manufacturing of pressure washers, and other equipment we needed to serve our markets in the cleaning industry.

Each new franchisee would need several of these motors per vehicle, and they might start out with two or three vehicles. This meant they needed nine small motors to run portable generators, pressure washers, and vacuum suction reclaim devise's to pick up the waste water from the washing process - just to start their new business. Thus, you can imagine the problems with back-orders.

Now fast forward to today with BP's Gulf Underwater Oil Leak, which has crude oil leaking to the surface of the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico and flowing towards the shores threatening ecosystems and the beaches. Not only does this hurt wildlife and become an eco-disaster, but it effects many other industries such as tourism, fishing, and all the local beach communities, as well as the kinds of challenges I mentioned above.

Right now there is a shortage of Environmental containment equipment throughout the nation.

This means if you go to an industrial catalog and order storm drain blockers, oil spill containment devices, or NPDES required barriers for construction sites or industrial uses, you won't be able to find any. They are all sold out. Of course every industry has rules and regulations, and the EPA and the environmental compliance doesn't really care if you can't find the devices you need to contain waste water, liquid, toxic waste, or chemicals that might leak from your business property, or job site.

Without the proper containment devices you will be fined, or be forced to shut down operations, as it is totally environmentally unacceptable not to have these things in place. This is a real challenge for industry, just as it was back when I was in business and natural disasters caused us havoc. We could not fill orders has promised to our customers.

This is when an entrepreneur is flying by the seat of their pants, making do with whatever they can, and we go into crisis management mode.

Perhaps you never thought of anything like this, as you've never had such experiences in your business or life. But I thought you'd like to hear my explanation and observations of the past to enlighten you to other challenges that exist as complex systems like that in our economy adapt to the problems that rear their heads. Please consider all this.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes in considering all the ramifications of any and all challenges we face.

Note: All of Lance Winslow's articles are written by him, not by Automated Software, any Computer Program, or Artificially Intelligent Software. None of his articles are outsourced, PLR Content or written by ghost writers.