The Acterra Group

“The aviation fueling business is also starting to be a bigger part of our business,” Cooper adds. “Our job there is to go and build new fueling systems. We recently built one up in Sturgis, South Dakota and we’ve worked in Illinois, Colorado, and Iowa. We manufacture the tanks, here in our factory, and then we ship them out to where they’re going, and then my crews set those tanks and finish those systems. “Also, we’ve been working with a large bio- diesel company that has gotten into the retail distribution of bio-diesel next to their own plants. We just built a facility in Illinois that should come online in the next week or two. That’s underground tank systems for bio-diesel and retail fuel dispensers on top - mainly for truck traffic that comes through and around the plant. That one customer is looking to roll this out among all their plants, and then, possibly, other locations across the country depending on how the first one goes." One of Cooper’s challenges, and one that he shares, these days, with many companies in many sectors, is finding enough skilled workers - especially in a rapidly changing business environment. “Most of the time, I can’t find a person in areas that we’re in that has ten years’ experience doing what we do,” he laments. “The business of working on a gasoline pump, today, is significantly different than it was 20 years ago because that same technician, today, is not just working on the fuel-related equipment - he’s also a network engineer; he’s working on networking systems that are connected to point of sale systems that are all connected to the internet. Then you add being out in the field, in the cold, in the dead of night, trying to get a fuel sensor to talk to a point of sale system out in the middle of nowhere. That’s a difficult person to find. We have them, but we need more. So, training is a never- ending situation. There’s always a new product to train on; there’s always a new certification to get.” The good news, though, is that over the last year, Cooper says that the Group has revamped its recruiting process and increased its wage scales to attract better employees - and it seems to be showing results. “We’re seeing quite a few more applicants in the last three months,” he reports. “I’m not sure if the market is starting to loosen a bit or THE ACTERRA GROUP