Unlike many employees at The Blythe Company, Jacob Stowe was not originally working in the natural gas industry before his role at this company.

In fact, he’s still learning and training for valve repairs, but he sure has learned a lot. And that’s a good thing, considering it’s one of the things he loves about his job.

“I’m completely new to the gas industry altogether so every bit of this is new to me so it’s very cool to get together and see things like the water bath heater installs,” Stowe explained. “And meeting new people when you go to valve repairs and seeing all the different problems and things they can run into and help them better prevent any further issues that they may have.”

Although he’s new with the natural gas industry, his past experience lent itself well for the transition into the field engineer role with The Blythe Company.

Before he started with the company in June 2018, Stowe was a design engineer for a company that manufactured heavy-duty equipment for small contractors, such as rollers, pavers, and graters. And before that, he was a hands-on mechanic at a car dealership. His experience in face-to-face interaction with customers as a mechanic coupled with his design engineering history has translated well into his new role, where he can exercise both skills.

“I enjoy just getting to be able to help these people and all the different techs that are having issues and teaching them and helping them understand their product,” he said.

A typical day for Jacob Stowe is much like anyone’s at The Blythe Company: unpredictable. Among customer calls for services and on-the-job training, he helps coordinate calendars and performs in-house training for companies to better understand their own products.

He described an example of a task: “A natural gas company is going to be burying some valves and we need them all piped up and accessible to maintenance from above-ground so we do that kind of stuff as well as the stem extensions.”

But at the end of the day, why does anyone take on a job or stay in a position? For the culture.

“When I got to the Blythe Company it just has a real good family feel. The company was started by Mr. Blythe himself and you know the Blythes are still there,” Stowe said. “It has a real good family feel to it and it’s hard to find in this world.”