MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
David Bienvenu Radiator Service Company
Letter to NARSA/IDEA members Dear NARSA/IDEA,
I’ll never forget the biggest mistake in my career. A deep-water tug boat that we supplied new tube and shell oil coolers for was having low oil pressure at idle issues. They couldn’t find any problems with the engine and questioned the oil coolers. Long story short: I ordered the first set of two correctly. The second and third sets I ordered with the wrong baffle spacing. The vessel was in Peru. I made the mistake, and I had to make it right. So, I was going to have to buy four new ones. They were special ordered, put in service, and I knew I could not return them. Freight was going to be expensive. Expedite fees were going to be expensive. Getting them through customs was going to be expensive. Down time was going to cost the customer a lot of money. All this flashed through my mind. My low blood pressure light came on. This has happened thousands of times in the last 25+ years!
DAVID BIENVENU, OWNER/OPERATOR of Radiator Service Company located in Houma, Louisiana has been a NARSA member for more than a quarter of a century. He is a former NARSA President and Chairman of the Board. Bienvenu is a graduate of Nashville Auto Diesel College. He worked as a field service diesel mechanic in the Gulf of Mexico oil corridor for 18 years and as a heat transfer product mechanic for 26 years.
NARSA/IDEA would like to thank David Bienvenu for his dedication and years of service. He will be inducted in the NARSA Hall of Fame during our 2021 Fall Conference in September in Grapevine, Texas.
I learned a lot from this mistake. I started using a purchase order system and faxed (now email) a signed hard copy of our purchase order with a reference to my vendor’s quote number. Had I done this before and sent an order for the wrong model my vendor would have probably questioned the fact that they specified a model with an “E” baffle spacing and I ordered one with “C” baffle spacing. (C=4-1/2” vs E=18”). I acquired a whole new outlook on how simple it is to make an innocent mistake. In the end, I was able to sell them to be used in a different application and recouped all my costs.
10 | THE COOLING JOURNAL | July/August 2021
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