It’s shaped like a lifesaver. And sometimes, it actually is one.
Contributor: EGC Engineered Solutions
The call came to EGC on Thursday, November 29, 2017, from Universal Plant Services (UPS), a project management, maintenance and repair service for the energy industry. They were doing maintenance at an oil refinery and couldn’t get a pressure seal for a Flowserve Edwards 14”, 2500# check valve. Without it, they knew the refinery would lose $4.5 million dollars per shift in downtime.
So, they called EGC Enterprises knowing that they could get a VSG Graphite pressure seal in a day. The order was placed at 5PM on November 29 and two graphite pressure seals were engineered and manufactured by early evening. But then, the trouble began. How would they get the pressure seal from Cleveland, Ohio to Houston, Texas for a 6AM CST installation on November 30? It would be a 24-hour drive for a hot shot driver and that just wasn’t fast enough.
So, UPS had their customer make a call to multiple carriers to see if they could make the delivery. When that didn’t work, EGC called Bob Rutherford, the company’s recently retired president. As a current pilot, Bob “knew some guys” who were at the lakefront airport. They were life-flight pilots who were responsible for taking human organs from one hospital to another and they could deliver the EGC pressure seals in plenty of time for the 6 AM startup.
“We don’t think there’s anyone better than EGC at engineering and manufacturing a pressure seal in a single day,” says Thom Jessup, Fluid Sealing Sales Manager for EGC. “But when you leave the airport in Cleveland at 11:30 PM and the plane arrives in Houston at 2:00 the next morning, that’s customer service!”
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EGC is a recognized world leader in the engineering and manufacturing of graphite composites for high-temperature applications in sealing or thermal systems management. The EGC website can be accessed at https://egcgraphite.com/.
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