It takes a trucker to recognize this need - fuel.
By Advance Business Capital 
Turning the Lights Back On
Ted Honcharik is CEO of Pacific Tank Lines, a California petroleum transportation service that delivers just short of 3 million gallons of fuel daily. In 2008, Shell Oil named Pacific North American “Carrier of the Year,” an honor it had received the year before from Chevron. Honcharik, as you might expect, is a busy, driven businessman, although a while back he found time to start a blog.

Here is the opening of his post for January 26:
Day started at 4:30 am. Woke up to mosquitoes biting and roosters crowing. Glad I am taking malaria pills this trip, but wish I had my bow for the roosters. Arranged an 805 gallon tanker with Fuel Relief painted on sides. Truck and fuel should be ready on Wednesday.

A Country in the Dark
Honcharik was then in Haiti, where he was serving as manager/operator of the Fuel Relief Fund, a nonprofit he originally started to provide aid to New Orleans. A regular consequence of natural disasters is the disruption of power. Until the grid can be restored, electricity is only provided by fuel-powered generators, and fuel is something Honcharik knows a lot about.

Although more than two months have passed since the January 12 earthquake, Haitians are still in dire straits. Survivors continue to need food, potable water, medicine and shelter, but after that they need electricity. In the quake’s aftermath, all four power plants that served Port-au-Prince were off line; power lines lay everywhere and 56-ton transformers had been tossed from their bases. (Volunteers from the National Rural Electric Cooperatives have since restored part of the city’s power.)

From Eating Oil to Heating Oil
Shortly after the disaster, Honcharik flew to the Dominican Republic, then boarded a bus to Port-au-Prince. His intent was to survey needs, then fly back to coordinate fuel deliveries. On the 12-hour bus trip over Haiti’s nearly non-existent roads, he met the sister of Kesney Auguste, a Haitian-born U.S. citizen who owns the country’s largest truck dealership. In Port-au-Prince Honcharik conferred with Auguste, who offered to donate a vegetable-oil delivery truck. A friend, the owner of a Dominican Republic construction company, provided workers to convert it to a fuel truck. Within three days Honcharik was driving a tanker with 850 gallons of fuel to emergency clinics, missions and tent cities. Five hundred gallons were donated by the construction company and Honcharik paid for the rest himself.

After twenty days, Honcharik returned to the U.S. to see his family and check how Pacific Tank Lines was doing without its CEO. “They didn’t miss a beat,” he said proudly. That might give other executives job insecurity, but Honcharik is going back to Haiti for another tour of duty, this time with his daughter, a student at USC.

There are lots of aid workers in Haiti, from doctors and nurses to construction crews and sanitation specialists, but at the moment Honcharik’s contribution is unique. “Nobody else is giving away free fuel.”

If you want to help Ted Honcharik and his mission, you can donate to the Fuel Relief Fund here.

This story was drawn from articles in the Riverside Press-Enterprise, CNN, the Fuel Relief Blog and the website for the California State University at San Bernardino.

This article is provided for truckers and everyone in the trucking industry by Advance Business Capital.
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