You are sitting in traffic and look over to see dusty air, roadwork signs, and power tools that sound like the roaring of a sold-out football stadium after a game-winning touchdown. You just drove past a construction site and all the equipment that inhabits it.

On February 7, 1904, a fire was reported in the John Hurston Building on West German Street just west of downtown Baltimore. As the fire progressed to neighboring buildings, fire companies from as far away as Washington, D.C., New York, and Philadelphia, PA arrived to help fight the blaze. But the firefighters from these other cities couldn’t use their equipment: The threads on their hoses didn’t match the threads on Baltimore’s hydrants. By the time the fire had died out, more than 70 city blocks and 1,500 buildings lay in ruin.

The thing about infrastructure is that most people don’t think about it unless it’s not working properly. When a bridge is closed or a roadway is under construction, if a water main bursts or a train is delayed, that’s when infrastructure gets your attention.

If there’s one potential mishap on your work site or plant that’s particularly damaging--but easy to avoid--it’s an improperly crimped hose. Ensuring a properly coupled hose assembly is critical to providing an effective fluid handling solution. Making an error measuring hose dimensions or incorrectly choosing the ferrule or sleeve will result in lost time and money. Worst-case scenarios result in injury to workers or environmental damage when a hose assembly fails as a result of being incorrectly crimped.

Airport fuel servicing. Not exactly what you think of when you consider the role that aircraft plays when transporting packages, consumer goods, and people across our planet.

Fueling an aircraft is a complex, and high-risk process that is heavily monitored by industry professionals to prevent harmful and costly accidents. Dixon’s overfill protection products play a vital role in the success of safely transporting fuel for aircraft and we will dive into them later, but first let’s review who sets these industry standards.

There is a sign hanging at my local barbershop. It reads, “We give three kinds of haircuts here: good, fast, and cheap. If it is fast and cheap, it won’t be good. If it is good and cheap, it won’t be fast. And if it is good and fast, it won’t be cheap.”

In this blog we will demonstrate how simple the 5500-series API coupler is to break down, service, rebuild, and return to service. A routine maintenance schedule will ensure the safe and correct function of the coupler.

As the debate over new infrastructure legislation heats up in Washington D.C., we thought it might be a good time to repost an article Ribbons Across the Land originally published in our Dixon Boss magazine in the spring of 2006. We hope you enjoy re-visiting the feature.

Dixon loading arms are used to aid in the transfer of liquids and dry bulk materials. You will see loading arms at railcar and tank truck terminals, refineries and chemical plants, and food and beverage plants. They are even used to assist in the filling of drums and totes. In applications like these, loading arms can be a preferred transfer option to a standard hose assembly.

When it’s critically important to keep a gas or liquid inside a system, consider a bellows seal valve. Bellows seal valves incorporate a cylindrical metal tube that expands and contracts like an accordion to create a hermetically sealed closure in a valve stem. The bellows gets compressed when the valve is in the open position and expands when the valve is closed. Because the bellows expands and contracts as the valve is operated, and because it is welded to the stem and bonnet, there is no leak path for the gas or liquid to escape.