Megan Carr has spent her entire propane career with Paraco Gas. After starting her post-college career in subprime mortgage lending and shifting into the transportation industry for a global recycling company with rising levels of seniority in the logistics department, she eventually made her way to Paraco in 2014 as a logistics manager. She has since excelled at the company, rising to director of logistics and business intelligence, and most recently appointed as director, field operations solutions team. In the 10 years Carr has been with Paraco, breaking the mold of a generation known for “job hopping” has been rewarding.
“It is nice to have some longevity and roots in a company,” she said.
Carr spends her time overseeing many moving parts as the leader of Paraco’s logistics team, from team schedules to bulk routing and cylinder routing for barbecue and motor fuel for all areas throughout the company.
“We also do the forecasting on these accounts,” she said. “We have a small dispatch team as a part of it. It’s a pretty big operation, getting all the trucks on the road and all the gas delivered safely and efficiently.”
Recently, Carr has taken on the service side of the company where she works with her team to craft technicians’ schedules, cover billing and serve as an operations support function to the field staff.
More Than Selling Gallons
Before coming to Paraco, Carr hadn’t had much experience with propane. With parents who grew up in the city, propane wasn’t a fixture in their household outside of grilling.
“I had no idea about propane — never used it, was never a consumer of it, never grew up on it, had no idea it heated a pool. It was pretty neat to see all the applications of it and … what it could do — fire logs, cooking, drying, just everything. It’s not just a heating source.”
Since beginning her decade-long career with Paraco, Carr has gleaned just how important propane is to people across the country — and found fulfillment in providing for consumers’ needs along the way.
“You’re keeping people warm. You’re keeping food hot on their table. It’s a different level of responsibility because it’s a very personal one. I would say the most rewarding part is just knowing that people can rely on us for their energy needs and whatever that might be to them. … Just having that responsibility of knowing you provide a service that people rely on you for is very rewarding.”
Root Cause
Part of Carr’s role at Paraco is about solving problems for her team and for customers. She places high importance on the concept of root cause in how she tackles challenges. She asks questions such as, “How did we get here? How did that happen? What’s the gap in the process or lack of process or a skip in it?” She approaches problem-solving by pinpointing what went wrong and following the trail to how that issue led to the current situation. Then, the focus shifts to how the team can fix it.
“Understanding where it went wrong from the beginning is how I approach almost everything — at home, too,” she said. “Like, ‘How did this crayon get on the wall?’ I’m very big on root cause, and then learning from it, documenting it, looking to see if there are any other potential issues because of that same misstep or lack of process. And then trying to fix it before it becomes an issue.”
Carr’s approach also extends beyond simply solving the problem; she perceives each challenge as a valuable learning opportunity. Moreover, she also engages in helping to educate other departments.
“There’s always time to teach someone or … help somebody. I try to infuse that in the team, to not just give the answer to get [the customer] off your phone, but really help them so that it prevents the phone call from coming in again.”
Leading Positive Change
Carr has been instrumental in developing Paraco’s data management by leading the implementation of the company’s business intelligence (BI) platform. This strategic initiative has yielded great success, turning into a time-saver for Paraco employees by automating reports that were previously done manually. It’s even become popular among employees to use the platform’s name as a verb — a fun sign of the success behind Carr’s hard work.
As Carr’s role at Paraco has evolved to overseeing the customer onboarding department, this shift put her into the driver’s seat of implementing the BI platform.
“There’s so much data integrity and responsibility that went around onboarding the new customers that it evolved into scorecards and other analytics for operations or sales,” Carr said. “We were doing a lot of stuff in Excel, and there was a legacy program that was no longer going to be supported. So, it forced our hand to start looking at different BI platforms.
“We spoke with the different departments to ask, ‘What report do you do manually every day, every week, etc., and how can we automate it?’ … I will always love a spreadsheet, don’t get me wrong. But to take that and say, ‘It’s right here for you. It’s ready to go, and you just got that time back for something much more valuable’ has been super cool.”
Women in the Industry
The fact that the propane industry has a largely male workforce isn’t lost on Carr — in fact, she works on a team that is majority men. And in her experience, it’s been an equitable environment. In fact, sometimes the dynamics are easy to overlook altogether. In a moment of levity, she described a business dinner with her team as a depiction of the Last Supper painting, with her in the middle of a long table of her male colleagues.
Historical painting reenactments notwithstanding, Carr sees the importance of reflecting on and recognizing the pivotal role of women within the industry. “It’s important to highlight and acknowledge anyone’s accomplishments. But I think women in a male-dominated industry is specifically important. It’s good to have a mix and a blend between the two. There are different personalities that help create a culture that can push the company forward, that can remain customer-centric.”
Her positive experiences have proven the normalcy of women with seats at the literal and figurative table in the propane industry. “It’s normal for me to be there. My seat at the table is just as deserved and respected as anyone else’s. My analytical and organizational skill set is valued and leveraged. It brings a good balance and mixture to the team, allowing everyone to learn from one another and grow.”
In the next five years, Carr hopes to see an increasing amount of women in higher leadership roles for industry committees and organizations, as well as in the technical and driving sectors of the industry. “It would be nice to see it at both ends, at the top and then at those entry-level positions out in the field in the face of the customers. I think it would be a really good representation of us out there.”
