Business Profile: Sclafani Oil and Propane, Mahopac
DAVID PROPPER PHOTO
On roadways all throughout Putnam County, the sight of Sclafani Oil and Propane trucks is a familiar one dating back to when oil prices were dramatically cheaper.
Covering a 42-mile radius, Sclafani, owned and operated by Maureen and Jerry Sclafani, offers its services to northern Westchester County, all of Putnam County, and southern Dutchess County, delivering pure, clean, and high quality heating oil, quality biofuel, propane, gasoline and diesel. Staffers are also on 24- hour call, which can be incredibly valuable when a house is having heating issues in the dead of winter or in need of air conditioning repairs in the heat of summer.
The family on Jerry’s side started with the gas station business in 1940s in Lake Carmel, with the heating oil aspect starting in that Lake Carmel garage years later in 1972. Eventually, the company needed more space and that’s when Sclafani was founded at its current location in Mahopac in 1987.
Maureen said the company continues to evolve, keeping up on industry’s standards. The company offers biofuel, which is cleaner than natural gas and every worker within the company has gone to school to learn how to handle a high-efficiency furnace.
“As much as people think oil is old,” Maureen said. “There’s a lot that’s new.”
Maureen began her career working as a salesperson for Union Carbide Corporation and worked in its data center for countless years. Though she enjoyed her job, once her son was born, she wanted to do something else that would be better suited to raising children.
She originally worked in Tarrytown for a few years and helped her husband with the books at night, but she ultimately decided to focus on the family business full-time. Maureen calls it a 12-hour day in the winter and a 9-hour job in the summer.
Being on 24-hour call, service workers occasionally fall into odd and bizarre situations. The craziest, Maureen can recall, happened 10-15 years ago when a homeowner with no heat needed repairs done in the basement; the only problem is there was a pet monkey that homeowner had living in the basement.
Maureen ended up telling her worker he didn’t have to do the repairs in the basement with the monkey after the homeowner didn’t want to remove the “pet” from that spot.
Whether oil prices increase or decrease, Sclafani always makes it a point to charge a fair price, do right by its customers and provide a high quality service. While Maureen has heard how other companies can make homeowners–many desperate for heat or cool air–wait a few days to respond to a call, Sclafani tries to respond within a few hours. She added, “It’s a crisis, you have to respond to somebody’s crisis.”
“We’ve been in Putnam since we were born,” Maureen said. “So for us it’s a personal thing.”
