What does it take to launch into autogas?

Kyle McCalla is one of 19 propane retailers in the room, and at 27 years old he might be the youngest. McCalla is here, like the others, because he wants to know what it will take to get his company involved in propane autogas.

Surely, he’s excited about the market’s potential and the forecasts for autogas. ICF International, for example, is predicting annual sales of more than 40,000 propane-powered on-road vehicles by 2020. Subsequently, ICF International is expecting a related increase in propane consumption of more than 400 million gallons by that same year.

Some predictions are mind-boggling, and they’ve driven retailers like McCalla here today. McCalla, a commercial energy specialist at United Landmark LLC in Lancaster, Ohio, hasn’t made an autogas-related sale to this point. He’s had conversations with a few school districts that are considering converting buses, and he has contacts that can help United Landmark branch into propane-powered mowers.

Still, McCalla has more questions than answers. And judging from the room full of retailers on this day, so do the others.

“Basically the only thing standing in our way [from autogas] is ourselves,” says McCalla, in a phone interview following the Propane Education & Research Council’s (PERC) Marketer Technology and Sales Training seminar on propane autogas, hosted at Bergquist in Toledo, Ohio. “I want our company to be the source of information for our customers. If I go to a customer I want to have an answer, and if I don’t have an answer I want to be able to get back to them quickly.” Read more here.