Admin - 04:00 pm -
February 19th, 2026 
On Sunday, February 15, Spring Brook Ice & Fuel Service was featured in the Hartford Courant, in an article entitled “Every Day Is Like a Fire Drill.”
The article’s title refers to the challenges of delivering fuel to their customers before their tanks ran out due to the recent brutal winter weather.
The article included photos of Spring Brook Ice & Fuel trucks and quotes from our company president, Greg Safstrom; Jack Safstrom, oil dispatcher and Greg’s son; and Roger Rose, Jr., our lead oil delivery driver.
Roger described climbing over snow piled high and dragging a hose filled with oil over terrain that may – or may not – have been cleared by the homeowner. Despite everyone’s best efforts, there were instances where drivers were unable to make deliveries because of the snow, then figuring out a fallback plan with the homeowner so that the truck can return before the tank runs dry.
The article pointed out that it was not only “the most snow in nearly a decade” that made it tough to make oil deliveries but also the “bitter cold that prevented melting for nearly two weeks.” Additionally, weather conditions caused some consumers to have the potential need for more oil than usual.
“It was kind of the perfect storm,” said Greg Safstrom, Spring Brook’s president.
The article also pointed out that Spring Brook has been largely insulated from rising home heating oil prices due to winter demand “because it stores large quantities of home heating oil at its depot.”
In fact, Spring Brook revealed that the challenging weather conditions created a surge of people calling about possible oil deliveries, including customers of other oil companies, 50 of whom they had to turn away. “We simply had to serve our own customers before we could take on any new business,” Jack Safstrom said.
