I doubt many folks in Arkansas know Russell Langston ... well, at least not personally. But I'll bet nearly everyone has benefited from his tireless efforts.
Langston is what's best known as a philosophizing Ozarks character. He travels Arkansas and surrounding states towing a bizarre-looking, stainless steel contraption called a "prover" that benefits many businesses, motorists, pilots and the flying public.
Should an Arkansan ask about his prover, he'll probably tell you with a straight face it's a portable still.
He says in Louisiana that it's a crayfish cooker. Oklahomans who question him are told it's a tornado chaser. It looks to me like it might service septic tanks.
But the two similar contraptions this engaging 66-year-old farmer from Alpena pulled behind his pickup for more than 40,000 miles last year are designed to precisely measure fuels we use in our vehicles and airplanes to ensure you and I are getting every ounce of the gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel we purchase.
Our state has licensed Langston and his private business to fulfill that weighty assignment since 2004, when Arkansas privatized the responsibility for precisely calibrating every commercial fuel meter for accuracy. State inspectors do follow up to ensure accuracy. The expensive provers he had fabricated in New Jersey are calibrated to make sure they remain as spot-on as possible.
Langston, who had been employed by a private company in Harrison for 14 years to conduct such testing for service stations, acquired his private state license 12 years ago and started Ozark Meter Service LLC.
With the state requirement that each Arkansas fuel meter be inspected annually by a licensed calibration firm, his customers grew to include many mom-and-pop stations, the military, and fuel-dispensing giants like Flash Markets, Pilot, Casey's, Kum & Go and the Murphy Oil stations. Last year he examined and certified more than 8,000 fuel dispensers across Arkansas, leaving behind his company's gold decals.
That number doesn't include the many calibrations he performs at fuel outlets in surrounding states where he's licensed. Last year, Russell said he slept more nights in hotel rooms than at home with his beloved wife Jeannie, whom he calls "the smartest person I know."
Russell, with two full-time and one part-time employees, honestly enjoys what he does. He even refers to ensuring honest fuel measurement as his calling. "A man doesn't have to work a day in his life if he's passionate about his work," he said. "And I always have been about doing this."
His fervor is evidenced by a plaque quoting Proverbs 11 he proudly showed me over coffee: "The Lord abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight."
Lest anyone mistakenly believe accurately measuring fuel can't be difficult, I'd invite them to read Langston's pamphlet: "Meter Drift: The Silent Thief." The pamphlet says drift is a natural occurrence all fuel dispensers experience as increasingly larger amounts are pumped through them, and is the largest single contributor to fuel losses and can result in substantial profit losses.
Russell hadn't been a licensed private fuel calibrator for long before realizing he needed a second prover. Rather than measuring gasoline, kerosene and diesel, this one would be dedicated to aviation fuel.
As Jeannie Langston put it, the risk of using the same gasoline and diesel prover to calibrate precise amounts in the same tanks is insignificant. But when people are soaring high in the air, the purity of fuel can be a matter of life and death. His aviation-fuel prover uses tanks of 50 and 200 gallons. In January, he split the metering service into two, one to service land-based fuels and the other for aviation. Today, Langston said he services 95 percent of all the airport fuel calibration needs in Arkansas.
His gas and diesel provers hold five, 50, 100 and 150 gallons. The array of equipment he pulls cost thousands to fabricate, but he realized he had to have the best equipment he and engineers could develop to ensure precision and his reputation as trustworthy. Over the decades he's achieved that goal and more.
Today, Russell makes it a point to outperform fuel-calibration ratios required by the state of Arkansas, which means he can accurately measure five gallons of gasoline to within a tablespoon.
"I'm not saying it can be perfect," he said. "But I'll get as close as a human can."
He sat back and smiled. "You know, I have zero focus on money to bring my satisfactions. My joy lies in other aspects that matter. If I do this job I dearly love right, people will call me. Money will come."
I, for one, am glad our state has Russell Langston and his crawfish-boilin', moonshine-brewin', tornado-spottin', septic-tank-pumpin' fuel-calibrating provers to ensure we each get the full gallon of gas we purchased.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 02/06/2016