I was in Texas recently (see my hat?) and what did I come across but our Drain ‘N Contain® Oil Recovery Pan!

Give me a three-letter word for what it was there to catch.

The answer is NOT o-i-l. That’s a real live longhorn next to me!

Sheep pigs are in the news this week (see them in the picture below), and people have been asking me whether I’m related to any of these odd beasts.

And I reply, “When you look at a sheep pig, you might think ‘Is it a sheep or is it a pig?’ But look at this PIG® Form-A-Funnel® Flexible Draining Tool …

Is it a funnel?

Or is it a tray?”

And they get caught up in the no-mess-oil-draining-plus wonder that is Form-A-Funnel® and all thoughts of sheep pigs evaporate.

Usually.

Sometimes, the person persists: “So really, are you related to any sheep pigs?”

Then I look the person right in the eye and say: “Yes, in fact, my extended family does include sheep pigs.”

Then I add: “Now let’s talk about YOUR rare and special relatives. Do any of them look like this?” And I show the picture below.

New Pig did a good thing this week, if I do say so myself, in giving away 35 pallets of our wipers to be used in Red Cross cleanup kits.

If a flood or other emergency has to befall you before you to get to use these particular wipers—then I hope you never get to use them!

New Pig world headquarters has been in the path of Snowmageddon this week.

You, too? Here’s a quick look at products we carry that are related to snow. Not many items (and one of them is on clearance, hint hint), but talk about drifty … er, nifty.  Click on the captions to see ‘em!

Strap-on cleats for snow and ice!

Hide your snow melt in style!

Like upholstering a 5-gallon bucket of snow melt!

New Pig will be the recipient (once again!!!) of three Product of the Year awards at the Manufacturing Summit and Awards ceremony to be held in Chicago on March 29th. The products honored are:

PIG BLUE™ Absorbent Mat in the Maintenance Product Category

PIG® Sheet in the Maintenance Tools and Equipment Category

PIG® Vapor-Control Latching Drum Lid in the Fluid Handling Category

The readers of Plant Engineering magazine voted for the products they deemed best in each category as featured in the November issue. New Pig may receive a gold, silver or bronze medal based on the results of this balloting. Winners will be announced at the ceremony in Chicago during the Manufacturing Summit and will be recognized within the pages of the April 2010 issue.

We’ll keep you posted on the results!

Better late than never, here are some photos taken this past August at X Games 15, where insane daredevils highly-skilled athletes compete in events such as skateboarding, motocross, BMX and rally car racing. We donated some PIG® 4 IN 1® Universal Absorbent Mat for some of the techs to use behind the scenes, soaking up messes AND acting as a seat (quick, change it to “5 IN 1″!).

Don’t look now—well, actually, please do look now— but the PIG® brand has gotten some more broadcast love.

Yeah, baby, we’re takin’ over your tube.

This time it was an appearance on Horsepower TV, which appears on Spike TV (insert manly grunt here). To see the clip, click here, and look for “Click Here to Play Video” about halfway down the page. PIG® Absorbent Mat is the dressing on the table of goods in the first minute or so. It makes that cast aluminum intake manifold, 750 cfm remanufactured Quadrajet Carb, Summit hydraulic cam & lifter kit, and Summit double roller timing set look sweet—not to mention lying in wait to catch oil and grease.

Quite a few Piggers were in on an email conversation last week regarding static-dissipative absorbent mats. I was asked to post some of my information from that.

A little background: Static-dissipative absorbents help reduce the risk of electrostatic discharge. This increases worker safety in fueling area cleanups and applications near flammable vapors. Static-dissipative mats are specially treated to meet NFPA 99 standards for static decay, which basically means that static charge is safely dissipated within half a second.

The material in our PIG® Stat-Mat® Absorbent Mats performs better than others we’ve tested. A particular competitor’s mat barely passes the .5 second static-dissipation cut-off, while ours does it in 0.01 seconds and has done so consistently for years. Another competitor’s mat isn’t bad, in a range between .25 and .35 seconds, but that’s still not close to our .01 seconds.

The big difference is in how the static-dissipative treatment is applied. We use a topical application while some folks out there use a polymer blend. Counter-intuitively, the topical application is better. The polymer blended material tends to “bloom off” the anti-static agent, as the agent isn’t compatible with the polymer, in as little as 6-12 months.

On the other hand, the topical solution doesn’t bloom off or lose effectiveness. We’ve taken mat from a seven-year-old PIG® Oil-Only Spill Kit at a local marina and sent it out for testing. The results came back like brand-new material.