By Lawrence McBride

All of the marketing materials provided in the weeks leading up to the 2011 APTA Expo in New Orleans, on the banks of the mighty Mississippi, referred to the nearly 18,000 APTA members, with the implication being that many of these members would be attending the conference held in early October.

If you are inclined to believe everything you hear in the news, you might expect the actual number attending was nowhere near the full member list due to economic constraints, but frankly, we did not notice.   We were too busy.  Nestled in the NGV Zone, we spent our time talking to bright-eyed entrepreneurs who sought consulting services, fleet superintendents who wanted to know what courses we were offering and when, seasoned industry pontificators wanting to talk industry, and our sponsors, who wanted to talk about our strategic successes for 2011, and what our plans are for 2012.

The networking, elevator speeches, anecdote exchanges, and even some of the knee-slappers I heard, all helped to underscore for me what I know many of our readers are already aware of:  that most of the organizations within our industry benefit greatly from their connectedness to the other organizations within it.   And I don’t mean a simple supply-chain connection.  The fact is, we need each other.

The APTA Expo brought so many disparate groups within the transportation industry together that I would imagine some people were quite overwhelmed.   There was so much there to see.  Aside from stimulating conversation at many of the booths, some of them were simply amazing visually, too. Still others were just mind-boggling.

How did they get the full-sized train, ties, rails and all, into the building?  Is David Copperfield an APTA Member?  The diversity of bus manufacturers (several of whom NGVi proudly provides training and consulting services for) were showcasing the vehicles that used various fuel technologies, and they  were gorgeous.

There were so many other vendors there, too, showing off their innovative solutions. Agility, and their fueling systems, SSP AFV with their fittings, and WEH with their brilliant fueling nozzle, are a few that come to mind.

At NGVi, our work focuses primarily upon helping clients safely integrate natural gas as a transportation fuel into their fleets.  Our work therefore tends to be more of the philosophical kind because we do not manufacture hardware.  We help our clients put together their own big-picture, to meet their strategic needs.  As previously stated, we achieve our goals primarily through consulting and training for not only to public transportation authorities, but also to OEMs, small-volume manufacturers or suppliers, and of course to fleet owners.

To overcome some of the key challenges we face as an industry, we need fleets to make choices that favor NGV technologies, and to favor what we do in support of natural gas as a transportation fuel.  In addition to the hard work we put in each day, a healthy diversity of service providers and manufacturers is also needed.  Competition is good.  A reputation is more meaningful when you have competitors that you can be stacked up against.

This interconnectedness was perhaps one of the biggest ideas that attending the APTA EXPO drove home to me:  we all need each other.  We need that diversity. A diverse group builds credibility, provides consumers with choices, and creates a marketplace in which we can all function.

So, although we do not build CNG stations, we do not manufacture tube-fittings, and we are not turning out high-pressure cylinders, we need all of the vendors who do.  In turn, manufacturers need their potential customers to understand how to use their hardware.  This is where we come in, and where the hardware people need us.

The APTA Expo 2011 brought so many people together from all over the nation (in fact, the world), in a lively town with a long history of creativity, diversity, and determination.  This paralleled what you will find in the NGV industry: creativity, diversity, and steadfast determination.

Say what you will about the benefits of social networking (NGVi enjoyed a bump in followers after the APTA Expo, too), but sometimes you just need to go to a big conference, meet a lot of people, shake a lot of hands, trade some good stories, and make real connections.  It’s an exciting time in the industry right now, and the APTA Expo brought that to light in many new ways for me.

The next exposition, APTA’s EXPO 2014 will take place at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, TX, October 13-15, 2014.