Profile in Business: Sean Cota: Doing it the Old Yankee Way

Vermont Business Magazine, Feb 01, 2003 by Marcel, Joyce

"Some companies have no hedges at all, whether it be paper or liquid," Cota said. "They say, 'Oh, the market's going to go down.' Well, that's gambling, folks. And it's fine to gamble, but if you're going to be taking money from a customer, you've got a fiduciary responsibility to that customer. Youve got to live up to that."

Industry Regulations

Cota calls the fuel oil industry "the most regulated unregulated industry there is." He deals with Vermont and New Hampshire regulations on such things as hazardous materials, air quality, underground tanks, above ground tanks, motor vehicle permits, excise taxes and much more, plus all the federal regulations.

"We have to implement all of the same federal and state regulations that a multinational corporation like Exxon or Mobil does, only without the staff," Cota said.

Failure to keep up with changing regulations can cause serious problems.

"Here's a great example," Cota said. "In the 1980s, Vermont adopted an underground storage program for large tanks, and they defined heating oil as anything use for on-premise heating purposes. Historically, we started with kerosene, so we always keep a kerosene dispenser for people who want it for lamps or space heaters. It's a 250 gallon tank. Because it was less than 1,100 gallons, at first we didn't have to register it. But the rule changed in 1989, with an annual registration fee of $250." Unaware of the change, Cota complied with the state's other regulations for underground storage tanks and in 1993, certain he had done a good job, he asked for a voluntary inspection.

"They came down, saw the dispenser, pointed out that the law had changed, and told us we should have registered the tank and gotten it permitted with annual fees," Cota said. "I apologized. I said we'd do a full site environmental closure within the week, pay all the past registration fees, do the permit application and pay back the interest. And we did, within a week. My reward for my aggressive efforts was to be Docket No. 1 in the Environmental Court, where we had a summary judgment against us for failing to abide by the regulations."

After that experience, Cota became something of an expert on changing regulations.

"This guy knows everything you'd want to know about filled out federal excise, diesel excise tax forms, whatever," said VFDA head Shane Sweet. "Sometimes it's overwhelming, what he knows."

Collections

When he first joined the business, Cota's father sent him door to door, making collections. That's where he learned his most important business lessons. He saw people struggling to live with limited resources, and he learned that rich people could be deadbeats. "It really doesn't matter what you've got, it matters how you live," Cota said. "I learned I could trust maybe the single parent who was working, and the kids maybe had a Nintendo. But the house where you had two parents, and an ATV on the porch, and two snowmobiles, three big dogs and all the extra cable access stuff, was not going to be a good risk. You could probably trust a single Mom better than the couple who was living for the moment."