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 answered the phone. There was no ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello’, just a ‘When you’re coming back?!’”

Shortly after, Dylan was back at Keystops, driving a truck. When the safety training manager put in his two-week notice, Dylan decided to apply for the open position and give safety a shot. He hasn’t looked back since. “Dylan has played a pivotal part in our growth, our improved performance, and driver recruitment and retention,” David said. 

Preventing turnover and working with employees is a priority for the team. “We look at how we can keep employees instead of just firing them if problems arise. We want to give every opportunity for success, so that way they can do better and get to where they want to be rather than moving on and hiring the next warm body that walks through the door.” Dylan said. “Once you get a little experience under your belt, you can begin to anticipate recurring issues. For example, if every few months like clockwork, a driver becomes complacent and repeats their previous mistake. Those are the opportunities where we can fix a problem, but more importantly, break a bad habit,” David said. 

Maintaining a safety culture is an ongoing endeavor. “Each employee comes from a different background and has outside influences. Even so, to maintain a safety culture is to help them understand that when they are at work, doing what they’re supposed to be doing, it’s going to be different than what they would do in their personal pickup truck,” David explained. “If you’re not looking at where you are at and what you could improve on, you’re not going to get better and possibly even slide backwards.” Of note, one of the Keystops companies just finished a 13-month run with no accidents. Now that’s impressive! 

Technology is another tool that David and Dylan have implemented to help take safety one step further. “A driver involved in an incident may take the standpoint of, ‘I’m not at fault.’ But we look at it from the standpoint of ‘Could this have been prevented?’ Our onboard cameras have helped tremendously, proving that most of the time we are not at fault.” David explained. 

“We have a couple of drivers who are part-time now and on the way to retirement, who have a collective 85 years of driving experience. For over 35 years, they have been doing things their way,” Dylan said. “And here comes David and me kicking the door in, saying, ‘Here’s a camera. Here’s a tablet. I don’t care if you’re 70 years old. You’re going to do it our way now.’ Well, these two drivers just picked it up and ran with it. I use them as ‘the example’ of what to do when I am training.”

Keystops became a member of KTA in 2017. “We initially joined because we wanted to learn more about state legislation and the state police, specifically, what their priorities and concerns were,” David said. “With the added benefit of being in a good place to exchange information and knowledge, there have been several presentations over the years that really opened our eyes. The KTA is a great resource for education.” 

“Meeting people in the industry and bouncing ideas off them while gaining knowledge has been huge for me,” Dylan said. He is currently in the process of creating a driver simulation system for training drivers at Keystops. “One of the members, who is at every KTA meeting, happens to have a driver simulation system. He actually gave me the opportunity to sit down and play with their system a little bit and see how it compares to mine and figure out ways I can improve. The networking is invaluable,” Dylan said with a smile.