How did we get here?
CNG Calumet started as part of a frozen pizza company that needed to save on transportation costs. In 2008 Doreen’s Gourmet Frozen Pizza in the face of unprecedented fuel costs needed to think outside the box. The company needed to act quickly as the economy was changing. A little research found the answer in “CNG”. In the beginning, a local utility company provided a supply of fuel at a reasonable price and the pizza company was converting CNG Pick-ups to freezer trucks.
In the 10 years of operating our “Green Pizza Machine Fleet ”, every news station in Chicago did a story on our little company’s efforts to save money and work for cleaner air. As time went on a little grant money provided us the opportunity for a pilot (FMQ 8-36) in house CNG station. A little more grant money allowed us to open a small public station (Ingersoll Rand) in 2014. In 2018 a man walked into our office and said he wanted to be in the Chicago Frozen Pizza Market. I said, “We can arrange that, now go get your checkbook”. To our dismay, he did not want to learn about compressed natural gas. We kept our warehouse and our CNG station. Since then, CNG Calumet has been working full time to bring economically priced pre-owned equipment to business, industry and government.
Thanks for the mentoring from the industry giants who are not with us anymore: Rick Ridenour, Patrick (Cowboy)Rodriguez and Tony Feger. There must be a monster RNG/CNG Station in heaven!