The fleet of oil company service trucks is being converted, to operate not on gasoline, but on propane. The conversion of those vehicles from gas to propane fuel was completed by an innovative, diversifying company in rural southeast Kansas.
Natalie Beard-Dent is owner of Beard Propane Heat and Air near Erie, Kansas. She has seen this business grow and change through the years.
Natalie’s grandfather, Hobart Beard, founded Beard Oil Company in Erie in 1939. For decades, he operated a true full service gas station, where attendants pumped your gas, cleaned your windshield, and checked your oil. (That is a lost art.) Hobart’s son Paul Beard grew up in the business, and then Paul’s daughters as well. “I remember climbing up to wash windows on the big milk trucks,” Natalie said.
In 1956, Paul Beard added a new line to the business: Propane, for home heating. Natalie also remembers riding in the propane delivery truck with her father. After she grew up and married, she had the opportunity to ride in those trucks again. “My baby was two weeks overdue, and Dad teased me that he should take me on a bumpy road in one of those delivery trucks to get that process going,” Natalie said. Eventually she had two children, without the use of trucks.
