‘Focus on HUB Nation’ Debuts Monday

The following news item is posted on our companion site www.vote4HUB.com:

LAKE CITY–A new politics-based talk program is set to debut on HUB TV on Monday, according to the HUB TV network.

The show, titled “Focus on HUB Nation,” will feature pundits from various sides of the political spectrum giving their take on the progress of the You’re the Boss election.

A hard-hitting talk show that will explore the politics of the You're the Boss election

HUB TV promises there will be no pulled punches in the discussion of the political issues of the campaign, according to their press release.

The show will air on HUB Industrial Supply’s April 30 Monday Morning Minute to commemorate the wrapping up of the Fabulous Monday primary season, which will end at 5:00 EST on that day. The show will also become available on this website after the 9:00 a.m. realease of the Monday Morning Minute email.

UPDATE: The video is available HERE.

Meet Our Staff: Andrew Carrender

He was sitting at home with his wife, minding his own business when a text message came across Andy Carrender’s phone.

A branch manager at One Main Financial (formerly Citi Financial) with 15 years’ seniority, Andy hadn’t had any reason to expect a career change was in the wind. But that unexpected text message posed a question that suddenly blew in a fresh breeze of interesting possibilities.

The message was from Gabriel Curry. It simply asked, “Would you consider coming to work for HUB?”

Over the course of the next month, Andy became convinced that the opportunity Gabe was offering him was worth leaving behind his comfortable, if not predictable, career.

“I had reached a plateau in my job,” he says. “There was no room for advancement unless I was willing to relocate, and I wasn’t interested in doing that.”

You can tell by that comfortable smile that he made the right choice

The happily married father of three wasn’t interested in pulling up roots for the sake of career advancement. All his family, including a twin brother, lives within a mile of him. But the opportunity to make a difference in a growing company where he was more than just a cog in a huge machine (and still be able to come home for lunch) proved to be irresistible.

So he gave his notice and joined Matthew Skowron in HUB’s inventory management department.

Andy points out the differences in corporate culture are obvious,. “It’s exhilarating to work for a smaller, growing company where I have real input in decisions that will shape our destiny,” he says. “At the same time, it’s a really good experience to have worked for a big corporation and be familiar with the efficient practices that were in place there so we can incorporate the good ideas here.”

Choosing a Respirator

N95 "Air Wave" model has a lot of surface area in those accordion folds

By Gabriel Curry

HUB Industrial offers a wide variety of masks to meet the safety and compliance needs of a vast majority of our customers.

But like a restaurant with a twenty-page menu, the plethora of choices often creates uncertainty about which item would be the best for you.

Part of our job as specialists in your industry is to simplify the complexities of consumable supplies. We invite you to give one of our industry specialists a call, and they can give you a recommendation.

But we recognize that some citizens of HUB nation prefer to be more hands-on; and for them, we have done our best to lay out the basics of our product line below so you can feel confident that you are using the right product for your shop.

Before we begin, we want to be clear about one thing: there are certain respiratory hazards that require specialized equipment not available from HUB. Do not attempt to use any of the passive devices described below in environments that are immediately dangerous to life or health, where the atmospheric oxygen concentration is less than 19.5%, or if the hazardous gases you are dealing with are odorless or tasteless.  All NIOSH certified respirators must be fit tested and used under the guidance of a comprehensive respiratory protection program in accordance with OSHA regulations, 29 CFR 1910.134 and other applicable regulations.

Paper or Plastic?

There are two basic styles of devices we offer at HUB: the disposable mask, or the reusable respirator.

Our Moldex half mask has a drop-down feature when not in use

The reusable respirator may be the choice for some work environments. They are available as a half mask or a full face mask and are used with replaceable filter elements that can be customized to the hazard. Whether you buy Moldex or 3M, you must outfit your mask with component parts compatible with that mask. 3M parts do not fit Moldex, and vice versa.

The disposable mask can be an effective protective device, especially when the hazards are limited to dry particulates in the air, such as sawdust or gypsum. A few models are equipped to handle nuisance vapors, such as are experienced by welders, and another will stand up to oily mists. Many are equipped with one-way valves, which bring an extra layer of comfort by permitting exhaled air a low-resistance pathway through the valve.

The reusable masks are designed to be easily disassembled for washing after every use. They may be worn comfortably during extended use, and the Moldex half mask is designed to drop down and be worn about the chest when not in use. Disposables, on the other hand, are… disposable! Just as paper plates and plastic utensils offer decided convenience over washing dishes, disposable masks can simplify plant protocol. In the same vein, the cost of the mask goes up as the quality of construction and design improves. Imagine yourself in the grocery store making strategic calculations on the cost/benefit matrix of 300 flimsy paper plates versus expensive Chinet® ware and you will be in the correct frame of mind to choose the best mask for your plant. Striking a balance between cost savings and comfort and effectiveness is the name of the game.

N95? P100?

Respirators are rated according to what they filter. The main division here is whether they filter particulates or gases/vapors.  Gas/vapors such as those found in paints and pesticides, formaldehyde, chlorine, etc. require the use of the appropriate filter cartridge in a reusable respirator mask.

N95 disposable

N95 disposable with valve

P100 disposable

Particulate aerosols can be “oil-free,” as in the case of sawdust or fiberglass insulation, or it could have an “oil aerosol” component as you might find in a machine shop. NIOSH-approved respirator masks are labeled with an N, R, or P designation followed by a number. The letter code tells you whether it has been designed to withstand oil aerosols; the number tells you the filter efficiency. The two most common particulate filters are N95 and P100.

N95: A particulate filter that is rated to trap 95% of particulates and should not be used in environments with oil aerosols. “N” class filters should usually be discarded after a day’s use (or less).

P100: 99.97% particulate efficiency, suited for use in the presence of oil aerosols. “P” class filters are rated for repeated use, although some manufacturers may have their own disposal instructions for this use. They may be worn until breathing becomes difficult.

Now here is a trivia question: What do the letters N, R, and P represent? The origins of the designations are not well publicized. The acronyms were developed by NIOSH.  As a public service, we are posting them here:

N             Not to be used with oil

R             Resistant to oils—Can be used for up to eight hours in oil-aerosol environment

P             Oil Proof—Best choice for oil-aerosol environment

The majority of applications of disposable masks will be those with a NIOSH rating of N95. These are intended as single-use masks to be discarded after a day’s work.

We sell one disposable mask that is rated at P100. We also sell P100 discs for use in our reusable masks. Additionally, we offer a “piggyback” adapter that will allow a P100 disc to be combined with a gas/vapor cartridge on Moldex reusable respirators for combined particulate and chemical filtration.

"Piggyback" adapter allows combination of gas/vapor cartridge with P100 particulate filtration

Chemical Filtration

Apart from a few disposable models that include a carbon layer for nuisance gas filtration, chemical filtration is the domain of the reusable respirator. HUB sells chemical cartridges for both Moldex and 3M respirators that are labeled for organic vapors as well as acid gas. Additionally, we have a Moldex cartridge that combines all hazards of all its other cartridges —acid gas, organic vapors, ammonia, formaldehyde, etc—into one.

These cartridges consist of material that acts as a sponge to adsorb the target contaminant. If the contaminant exists in concentrations in excess of the cartridge’s ability to remove (or if the cartridge has been used up), the wearer may become conscious of the contaminant by smell or taste and must leave the hazardous environment immediately, but this type of warning property must not be used as the exclusive criteria in determining when a hazardous atmosphere should be left or when a particular respirator should or should not be used.  OSHA requires that the user develop a change-out schedule for these types of respirators.

We do also sell an emergency escape respirator which is designed to be clipped to belts of workers in environments where the possibility of chemical spill is present. In the event of an accident, these lightweight respirators may be deployed to allow a worker some measure of safety while escaping from the danger. It is not intended for regular use and should be disposed of after use.

Figure 1. Common hazards and their prescribed respirator

A health and safety professional should always be consulted to determine the appropriate use of a respirator in any contaminated environment.

All NIOSH certified respirators must be fit tested and used under the guidance of a comprehensive respiratory protection program in accordance with OSHA regulations, 29 CFR 1910.134 and other applicable regulations.

 Thanks to Moldex for their help preparing this article and for the use of  these images. For a video rundown of disposable respirators, see MMM.HUBindustrialsupply.com/disposable-doesnt-mean-cheap/

Meet Our Staff: Jorge Sotres

Talented people seem to be drawn like a magnet to HUB Industrial Supply. Case in point: Jorge (we call him George) Sotres, our IT manager. Jorge found his way here all the way from a little mountaintop hamlet near Mexico City.

Are his dreams in English or Spanish? ...or perhaps in MS-DOS?

Since he began here at HUB in 2006, Jorge has left an indelible mark on so many facets of the HUB culture that they would be hard to list all of them on this page.

As a young man in Mexico, Jorge studied computers and received degrees in systems analysis and programming. He also had a passion for teaching, and he eventually found himself on the faculty at the University of Cancun with the additional responsibility of heading up the university’s IT department, with several technicians under his direction.

As contented as he was with his successful career, he longed for a community where he and his wife could raise their two young children in peace and tranquility. He found the place he was looking for when he visited his brother in Lake City, Florida.

Pulling up roots wasn’t easy. He worked for a time in his brother’s automotive garage before he snagged a job at HUB. Even though his English was still “under construction,” Gabriel decided to take a chance and set him up in the company’s newly-created marketing department.

From the outset, Jorge became a force to be reckoned with. The marketing department wasn’t big enough for Jorge, and pretty soon he was hard at work improving HUB infrastructure. He has been instrumental in streamlining and automating our order and inventory system, changing our phone system to voice over/IP, and a host of other major improvements.

“My passion is God, my family, computers, and cars—in that order,” Jorge says. “My interest in computers is about how they can be used to help us be better, as opposed to just playing with machines because they are fun.”

YOU’RE THE BOSS Election Gets Underway with a Bang!

LAKE CITY—HUB Industrial Supply is in the midst of a battle royal to determine who should be “president” of the office of “You’re the Boss.”

The nine candidates are reaching out to their constituents, shaking hands and possibly even kissing a few babies in an appeal for votes. They are locked in a struggle to see who will win the right to represent HUB Industrial Supply in what has been dubbed “the march to the white box.”

When not on the campaign trail, eight of the nine candidates have full-time jobs as industry specialists for the company. The ninth is the president of HUB, Gabriel Curry. He is running as the incumbent candidate, since it is his likeness that currently gazes out from the rubber-stamp-like mark that bears the legend, “At HUB Industrial Supply, You’re The Boss!”

“We have a very strong theme here at HUB that the customer is our boss,” said Curry. “Even the sturdy white boxes we ship our products out in have that cartoon of me saying it.”

Since this is an election year, Curry decided it was a good time to put his face to a vote. “That cartoon started out as a flight of fancy dreamed up by our marketing department,” Curry said. “My face was basically put there by default. I thought, ‘what better way to get our business partners invested in the ‘You’re the Boss’ concept than to put up my face against these hard-working industry specialists?’”

Which candidate deserves to be pictured here?

And to sweeten the deal, Curry threw in $2,500 worth of prizes to be awarded in a random drawing to customers and prospects who cast votes. The drawing will take place at the conclusion of the election on June 28.

The campaign kicked off on February 6 with part one of a three-part video series introducing the candidates. The video, hosted by two HUB employees moonlighting in the role of news anchors, lays out the campaign and presents each candidate’s stump speech. The videos were sent out as part of HUB’s Monday Morning Minute email program and posted on a dedicated website as well.

The website, www.vote4HUB.com, is considered to be the headquarters for the election. It contains information about the candidates, contest rules, a list of prizes, and many entertaining features.

It is also the preferred place to go to cast your vote.

Voters are permitted one vote per day until the conclusion of the promotion on June 28. Each vote gives the voter another chance in the prize drawing.

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For more information, contact Ken Lacey ken@hubindustrial.com .

Directory of HUB Websites

In addition to our online catalog, HUB Industrial Supply maintains a number of stand-alone websites to support certain specialty industries and to facilitate marketing promotions. The following are a listing of them all.

Pallet Insider www.palletinsider.com

Blog and resources for pallet recycling shops

Auto Recycler Insider www.autorecyclerinsider.com

Blog and resources for auto recycling industry

Monday Morning Minute mmm.HUBindustrial.com

Archive of previously released Monday Morning Minutes

www.Vote4HUB www.vote4HUB.com

This is the official website for our President of ‘You’re the Boss’ election promotion, going on between Feb 6 and June 28, 2012.

Nine candidates are running for the right to have their likeness representing HUB on the boxes we use to ship out supplies to our customers. Voters can vote once a day and are entered into a drawing to win valuable prizes.

The site has many fun features including a blog, embedded videos, and an interactive chart showing real-time voting results.

Will It Land? www.willitland.com

This is the website where citizens of HUB nation upload videos of their helicopters flying (and hopefully landing!). It is the headquarters for occasional video contests such as Will It Land Again? which ended Jan 31, 2012.

All of the videos submitted are archived on the site for viewers to watch and conjecture whether the best video won the contest.

HUB continues to maintain this site and has plans for more helicopter promotions in the future.

Putting My Presidency Up For a Vote

By Gabriel Curry

As most of you know, I have been the President of “Who’s the Boss” for the past several years. I would like to think I have been doing a pretty good job of making sure every HUB customer knows and feels like they are our boss.

Who's face do you think belongs here?

However, a fair-minded president knows the people ultimately determine his legacy, so I felt it was only fair for me to put my presidency up to a vote. That’s right: with this being an election year, I wanted to give you, our customers, a chance to let us know who should be the real president of “Who’s the Boss.”

A wise man once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Proving that you can handle the responsibility of making sure our customers receive the very best in service is no small task. I knew I had to give my folks a reason to TRY and take my title…there had to be something on the line. So, for the next few months, you will have the opportunity to ride your candidate “all the way to the White Box.”

Currently the caricature residing on the side of every box that leaves our warehouse is that of none other than yours truly. From now until June 28, 21012, however, you will be able to cast votes for your candidate and give them the opportunity to put THEIR image on the side of our boxes for one year! Better still, every time you cast a vote for your candidate, you will be entered in a drawing for one of several prizes totaling over $2,500! We have a delightful website set up for the purpose of this promotion that you can view here.

And just to make sure nobody gets the wrong idea: I will remain president of HUB Industrial regardless of the outcome of this campaign. The only thing at stake here is the right to have the likeness of the winning candidate on the boxes we send out to you. See the following page for more information.

I know I am pretty consistent in telling you that we appreciate you but I want to remind you once again how thankful we are to have you as our customers! I would also like to go ahead and take the opportunity to say: Ask not what you can do for HUB but what HUB can do for you!

Meet Our Staff: Joel Smollack

The blue bench

The front of our warehouse has an enormous table known as the blue bench. It serves as a command post and staging area for everything from weighing out fasteners to laying out returns to duty as a buffet table when we host a company lunch. At one corner of this table is a computer and a stool where you will find purchasing/inventory assistant, Joel Smollack. Depending on how you define it, he either has the largest desk in the company or the smallest.

Joel’s duties here at HUB revolve around making sure our inventory system accurately reflects what we have in our bins, crediting returns and ordering items to keep up with demand.

Anyone familiar with automated tracking systems knows that you can never quite achieve total accuracy and must constantly reconcile what the computer says you have on hand versus what is actually there. Joel performs daily cycle counts on the inventory to keep things from getting out of whack.

Joel was born and raised in Lake City and has been with HUB for three and a half years. He started out as a warehouse hand and worked his way into his present position. He has become a critical component in fulfilling HUB’s $100 in-stock guarantee; if not for Joel’s commitment to his duties, we’d be sending out a lot of $100 checks!

A guy and his truck

In his free time, Joel makes the most of his F150 XLT truck. He likes exploring many nuances of the Florida countryside, which ranges from beaches and springs to rural landscapes that look pretty much the way they did before Florida became a vacation destination. He comes from a close-knit family and he enjoys spending time with his young nieces and nephews. He also likes to tinker with his gas-powered remote control truck, but is considering trading it for an electric one. “Nitro is too annoying,” he says, citing the amount of time he has to spend adjusting the carburetor every time the weather changes.

Specialists Corner: Bennett L.

Editor’s Note: Our industry specialists all host a column in our HUB Insider monthly newsletter, but only readers in their specialist industry get to read them. We have selected some of the best examples of these columns and posted them in this blog.

My family on my mother’s side is Cuban.

Bennett and "Mama" (his grandmother)

She was eighteen years old when she came to this country with her mom and dad. None of them knew a word of English, but by the time she married my dad three years later, she had a decent grasp of English. Her dedication to her adopted country was so thorough that my brothers and I grew up without ever learning to speak Spanish. The little bit that I know was learned on the construction site when I had to manage Mexican employees.

One custom my mother did not leave behind is keeping very close ties with family. My grandparents have always been near and cherished members of the family. It’s not always easy talking to my grandmother—she understands English better than she can speak it, but she always finds a way to get her point across. What she lacks in verbal skills, she more than makes up for with her cooking!

Every fortnight, our extended family gathers for a shared meal. No matter whatever else is on the menu, we can always count on Mama to make us some fried plantains. Plantains look like oversized bananas, but you wouldn’t want to try them raw. The way Mama makes them, they taste better than French fries.

This is her recipe:

Select green (not brown or yellow) plantains and peel. The peel is like a banana, but you need to take it off with a paring knife. Cut the plantain into sections about 1” in length and place them in boiling vegetable oil (365˚) until brown, about 5 minutes. Remove from oil and stand the sections on end so you can squash them with the bottom of a glass tumbler. You want to collapse them to about ¼” thickness and then return them to the oil to finish frying three or four more minutes until crispy. Place them on absorbent paper, salt generously, and enjoy.

Meet our Staff: Judy Kent

Judy Kent
Financial Assistant

Judy Kent is an early riser. Nobody really knows for sure when she shows up for work every morning; we just know that she’s going to be at her desk already looking at a spreadsheet or counting beans no matter how early anyone else reports for duty.

A veteran of 7 years, Judy says she still looks forward to coming to work every morning. Her primary job is accounts payable, but she gets asked to pitch in on other tasks with enough frequency that she has learned to stay flexible.

Judy says one of the nice things about working for HUB is that the company recognizes the value of treating vendors like gold. “We coddle our vendors,” she says. “That way, when a customer gets in a pickle with their inventory, we can go to our vendors and get them to do stuff they wouldn’t ordinarily do, so we can help the customer out.”

When she’s not at work, Judy enjoys spending time with her family, animals, and the great outdoors.

Meet our Staff: Danny Kampmeyer

Danny Kampmeyer
Customer Service

"Work sure is fun!"

We don’t have a receptionist to answer incoming calls; instead, we have a team of trained professionals like Danny who assist callers by routing them to the correct specialist, taking orders, handling returns or whatever else is called for to show our customers that they are the Boss. If you are calling us with any regularity, chances are very good that you’ve spoken with Danny at some time or other.

Danny’s demeanor can be compared to a Saint Bernard puppy: He can bowl you over with his enthusiasm and sincerity. He clearly enjoys his job here at HUB and he takes great pride in solving customers’ problems.

“Working here at HUB is somewhat like a dream job,” Danny says. “I enjoy having a job only 5 minutes away from home making it an easy commute back and forth to work. My wife and four kids really appreciate that as well. I have a great support team here and the whole company is like family.”

Danny comes to us after a 13 year career as a service manager in the Green Industry

Danny at rest

. He enjoys spending time with his family when he’s not working. With three daughters and one son aged from seven to one, there’s never a dull moment at home!

Specialist Corner: Kurt M.

Kurt

Editor’s Note: Our industry specialists all host a column in our HUB Insider monthly newsletter, but only readers in their specialist industry get to read them. We have selected some of the best examples of these columns and posted them in this blog.

Last month, we ended our “Will it Land?” video contest and I’m pleased to announce that my customer, Josh Cameron from Coreslab Structures in Tampa, came away the big winner of an iPad 2.

If you somehow missed our promotion of the contest, we invited customers to submit videos of themselves flying remote control helicopters, and the video that contained the best mix of entertainment, flying skill and production quality would win the iPad 2. If you are wondering how enough of our customers would have a helicopter to make a video with, you really need to call me and I will tell you how you can get one, too.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, my great customer Josh Cameron! Josh and his family were highlighted in the video which is six minutes long and shot in various places around his home. Josh, his pregnant wife and one-year-old daughter were great “movie actors,” and the video turned out very well. He said they spent a lot of time, had fun (and some arguments) making it, but knew it would be worthwhile if they won. They did win, and I was honored to hand-deliver the prize to him last month. He is excited to be able to take it on an upcoming trip.

Kurt presents Josh his iPad 2

Watch the video at Willitland.com to see the final landing place of Josh’s HUB copter!

Specialist Corner: Jonny Guinn

Editor’s Note: Our industry specialists all host a column in our HUB Insider monthly newsletter, but only readers in their specialist industry get to read them. We have selected some of the best examples of these columns and posted them in this blog.

Now that I have a place with enough room to grow something, I’m determined to make the most of it. I started a garden three years ago, and that year, everything prospered. We ate for months off the peas, beans, okra and everything else, and it was worth every minute I invested in it.

Last year, not so much.

The first year was kind of an experiment to see whether my thumb was green enough to make it work. I grew some vegetables one year when I was a kid, but we had moved the following year and never had enough ground until now to try it again.

So I tried a little bit of everything that first year, expecting to learn what would do well in this zone with this soil. Corn. Tomatoes. Potatoes. Yellow Squash, Carrots, Zucchini. Cantaloupe. Onions. Garlic. Beets, Hot Peppers, Bell Peppers, Radishes, Green Beans, Peas, Sweet Potatoes, Okra, Macaroni.

Much to the amazement of my neighbors, friends, and family it all did really well. The macaroni was the only thing that just flat didn’t work, but I would have been pretty impressed with myself if it had.

My favorite was the okra. Now, some of you reading this might be wondering how anybody could say a kind word about okra, but it can be really good if you prepare it properly. Deep-fried with a cornmeal breading is one way, but I’m particularly partial to a simple stir-fry where you julienne the okra (slice it lengthwise into little strips) and cook it with oil, garlic, salt and pepper, and other veggies. It’s not overly slimy that way, especially if you cut it with lemon or lime juice while cooking.

Last year’s crop proved that I’m not the genius gardener my kids had come to believe I was. As great as the first year was, last year was correspondingly bad. Maybe it was the late start; maybe it was using seeds left over from the previous year. All I know for sure is, it wasn’t very successful.

Which is why I’m looking at this coming growing season with renewed enthusiasm. I’m going to plant on time with good quality plants and seeds. I’m going to weed. I’m going to water. And I’m going to enjoy it all, but especially the okra.

Gloves in the Age of the Smartphone

Have you looked at glove choices lately?

There has been a revolution underway that is both exhilarating and confusing in the protective glove business. Space age fibers, new methods in coating—it’s high time to get updated on what’s available and what it can do for safety, productivity and cost control. To think you could retire the old ill-fitting leather gauntlets in favor of a safer, less expensive, more comfortable glove that you don’t have to remove to send a text message is a good reason to examine the latest news on work gloves.

HUB Industrial Receives Distributor Of The Year Award

LAKE CITY, FL—IBC, a nationwide organization of manufacturers and distributors, presented Hub Industrial Supply with the 2009 Distributor of the Year Award at the organization’s annual meeting earlier this month.

“We are very pleased and gratified to receive this award,” said Hub Industrial Supply President Gabriel Curry. “ It’s nice to get a pat on the back like this once in a while—it means we’re heading in the direction of our goal of exceeding expectations.”

IBC’s membership consists of 105 industrial manufacturers and 94 distributors. The organization exists to facilitate relations between the two groups. In the spirit of their mission, the annual award is determined by a vote of the member manufacturers who in turn vie for Manufacturer of the Year award determined by a vote of the distributors.

Hub Industrial Supply distributes saw blades, abrasives, safety products, fasteners and other consumable products to industrial customers across the country.