TransCanada Helps Quality Mat Build Strong Communities

Growing up in soggy Southeast Texas, Joe Penland saw firsthand what a struggle the oil and gas industry faces moving heavy equipment through the perennial muck that covers much of the low-lying countryside.

An ironworker by trade, the young Penland watched as gangs of 30 and 40 workers struggled to lay a plank road or drilling pad, tossing timbers onto the ground and lining them up. It was hard, dangerous, time-consuming work.

As it turns out, there was a much better way. And Penland, with an investment of just more than $2,000 and working in his mother’s back yard, figured it out.

“I came up with the idea of doing something prefabricated in a shop instead of out in the weather,” Penland recounted. By manufacturing mats built to different specifications and for various applications in a factory and then moving them to where they were needed, “You could increase productivity, you could increase safety on the job, everything would be recoverable; and, as the good Lord was behind us, and with my mother praying every day, it turned out to be the right thing.”

Penland patented his concept and now fabricates more than 250,000 mats a year in his facility inside the Beaumont city limits. He markets them worldwide, and he leases them to companies such as TransCanada, which used Quality Mat products during construction of our Gulf Coast Pipeline in Oklahoma and Texas.

Giving back to the community in which he was raised is a top priority for Penland, who commits approximately one-third of his company's profits to supporting community improvement projects including a breast cancer screening program.

Read more and watch a video about Joe Penland's story on TransCanada's blog.