How BettyJet Kept Tampa Running During Hurricane Season
Background
When a Category 3 hurricane made landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast, Tampa Bay faced a 72-hour power outage affecting over 400,000 residents. Hospitals, nursing facilities, emergency shelters, and water treatment plants were all dependent on backup generators — and those generators were burning through diesel at rates that quickly exceeded their stored supply.
BettyJet had nine active accounts in the storm zone, including two hospitals, three nursing facilities, two emergency shelters, and two municipal water treatment plants. All nine facilities needed emergency generator refueling within the first 24 hours of the outage.
What Was at Stake
Standard fuel supply chains were crippled. Three terminals in the Tampa Bay area were offline due to storm damage. Major fuel card networks were down because gas stations had lost power. Roads were partially blocked by debris, and normal delivery routes were impassable.
The facilities BettyJet served had generator tanks sized for 24-48 hours of runtime. With power restoration estimated at 72+ hours, every one of them faced the prospect of generators running dry — which for the hospitals meant patient evacuations and for the water plants meant a boil-water advisory for hundreds of thousands of people.
How BettyJet Delivered
BettyJet had activated its hurricane preparedness protocol 48 hours before landfall. We pre-staged 25,000 gallons of ULSD at a secure inland location, confirmed alternate supply routes from the Jacksonville and Port Everglades terminals, and pre-positioned delivery trucks north of the projected storm path.
Within 6 hours of the storm passing, BettyJet had two trucks running deliveries on pre-cleared routes. Our drivers used GPS-verified alternate routes to bypass debris-blocked roads. We prioritized deliveries based on generator runtime remaining — hospitals first, then water treatment, then shelters.
Over the next 48 hours, BettyJet completed 22 emergency deliveries totaling 15,000 gallons of ULSD. Every facility received fuel before their generators reached critical levels. Not a single delivery was missed or delayed beyond the committed window.
By the Numbers
15,000
Gallons Delivered
22
Emergency Deliveries
6 hours post-storm
Delivery Time (first truck)
0
Missed Deliveries
9 of 9
Facilities Kept Running
2 hospitals
Patient Evacuations Prevented
What They Said
“Every other fuel vendor we called said they could not deliver for 3-5 days. BettyJet had fuel at our loading dock within 6 hours of the storm passing. They kept our generators running when the alternative was evacuating 400 patients. That is not a vendor — that is a lifeline.
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