This month’s Pipeline Technology Podcast episode sponsored by Pipeline & Gas Journal features Melanie Medley and Travis Jobe discussing ‘Tested by Travis’ and how it came to be, as well as what they have tested so far.

In this month’s episode, you will learn about why Tested by Travis is useful, how viewers are reacting to the episodes, and their plans for future videos

Tested by Travis Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Travis Jobe is the talent behind Tested by Travis on the Allan Edwards YouTube Channel – and he is an employee in the Allan Edwards manufacturing shop.
  • Tested by Travis Episode 1
  • Tested by Travis Episode 2
  • Tested by Travis Episode 3
  • Tested by Travis Blooper Reel
• Melanie Medley is the marketing director at Allan Edwards. Connect with Melanie on LinkedIn.
• Allan Edwards |  Since 1947, Allan Edwards has leveraged its first-hand experience and trusted expertise to steer advancements in pipeline performance. Allan Edwards engineers, manufactures & distributes products that optimize throughput wherever product flows.
  • OmegaWrap® composite repair system strengthens and reinforces the integrity of a pipeline without interrupting flow, repairing a multitude of defects and accommodating up to 80% wall loss. Available in e-glass or carbon fiber variants, this system delivers the repair solution you need without the added risk of heavy machinery, welding or specialized tools.
    • Check out the videos of Travis testing the OmegaWrap carbon composite here. 
• Pipeline & Gas Journal is the essential resource for technology, industry information, and analytical trends in the midstream oil and gas industry.  For more information on how to become a subscriber, visit pgjonline.com/subscribe.

Tested by Travis Full Episode Transcript

Announcer: The “Pipeline Technology Podcast,” brought to you by “Pipeline & Gas Journal,” the decision making resource for pipeline and midstream professionals. Now your host, Russel Treat.

Russel Treat: Welcome to the Pipeline Technology Podcast, episode 36. On this episode, our guests are Travis Jobe and Melanie Medley with Allan Edwards. We’re going to talk to Travis and Melanie about their new “Tested By Travis” video series, how to break stuff, and have fun doing it. Welcome to the Pipeline Technology Podcast, guys.

Travis Jobe: Thanks for having us.

Melanie Medley: Russel, thank you for having us. I’m Melanie Medley. I’m the Marketing Director here at Allan Edwards. I’ve been at the company for about three and a half years now. I’m here with Travis Jobe, who will be introducing himself now.

Travis: I’m Travis Jobe.

Russel: Travis, by the way, for those that are listening to this episode, I just want you all to know, Travis is the talent, and Melanie is the reason that Travis is talented.

Travis: That makes sense. Checks out. I’ve been here for three years and I work in the shop. I pretty much run all the machines we have here. I help build all our parts that go out.

Russel: Most of the people that listen to this podcast are going to be familiar with Allan Edwards, particularly if they do anything around the pipe and integrity management. You guys have been around for a long time, done a lot of great work. The first question I want to ask is how did you come up with the crazy idea that you needed a video of people breaking stuff?

Melanie: That’s a great question. We had been throwing out the possibility of doing some content piece that represented something like Tested By Travis of what it turned into. We’ve been tossing it around for a while.

Mostly the conversation started with Chip Edwards, who is our president. He’s the fourth Allan Edwards, great grandson of our founder. He actually still runs the company today. He’s always full of these big ideas. One of his big ideas was, “How do we really get engaging funny content out there in the industry?”

We’re a very buttoned up industry, very regulated heavy industry. Sometimes it’s just nice to laugh at yourself a little bit, to laugh with others, and to bring that humorous element in. That’s what we wanted to do with the Tested By Travis web series.

Russel: I got to say, the whole idea of taking pipelining and finding the humor in it, that’s a pretty radically different idea because I don’t think anybody’s ever had a conversation with me in all my years of talking about how we make pipelining funny. It tends to be just the opposite. That’s a pretty radically different idea.

Melanie: We work in a very high consequence industry. It’s a very serious line of work what we do. It is funny seeing the humor in that. It’s really important, especially if you want to engage the pipeline community to see the light hearted side of what we do as an industry. That can be such a rallying point.

We really wanted to bridge that connection with our customers, not only are we there for you from a product standpoint, from a repair standpoint, but we can also laugh with you, and we want to be equally engaged with our community, not just with what we sell, but with the content that we put out. We can put on entertaining stuff, too.

Russel: Travis, how is it that you’re the one that got elected to be the on camera personality and talent that break stuff? Because I would expect most of your job is putting things together and not breaking them.

Travis: My favorite part is the breaking part. We had a Christmas party last year, and there were drinks, and I was acting a fool. There were definitely drinks involved. I was acting a fool. They decided that I would be the right person to take on the role. It wasn’t Tested by Travis then, but obviously, I’m Travis. That’s when it became Tested By Travis.

Melanie: At that point, we knew that we wanted to do something. We knew that we wanted to put out some show. I believe that conversation went something like Chip approaching me at the Christmas party and he said, “Do you see that guy over there? That’s your guy. That’s your feature.” The rest was history from that point.

Russel: I feel like I know a whole lot more about Travis just because of that one statement right there. That tells me you’re the knucklehead in the shop, I’m suspecting.

Travis: That’s going to be 100 percent facts, for sure.

If you want to interview anyone else on the podcast, they’ll probably tell you the exact same thing. I bring the morale. I just bring it out.

Melanie: He brings the smiles. That’s for sure. It’s really hard to sit in a room with Travis and not laugh at him, laugh at yourself, laugh at the situation.

Russel: How did you come up with the name, Tested By Travis, instead of broken by Travis? 

Melanie: It just made sense. It’s another way for us to really get some irony out there because if you know anything about Allan Edwards, we do invest heavily in product testing. We’ve put out several new products in the last several years. Each time we put out a product, we do a lot of performance testing to validate that product.

This is true with the composite wrap that we put out. This is true with our induction heated Compression Sleeve. Then all of our sleeves, we’ve subjected to intensive validation testing.

We knew that we wanted to use Travis, he had the perfect name for it, and we wanted to develop a parody show about, “Hey, here’s how we test our products. Here’s how we break them, but here’s how we can be funny too.” It was just a natural fit. It didn’t take a lot of thought to bring it together.

Russel: It’s interesting because I often talk about bubba geeks. It’s a turn of phrase that I came up with.

The idea it’s somebody who is very technical, probably an engineer or really good technician, knows a lot about how things work, drives a pickup truck, likes to fish and hunt, and has both a game camera linked to their cell phone and a gun rack in their pickup. It’s a glorious combination of redneck geek.

Travis: High class hillbilly.

Russel: Yeah, high class hillbilly. Exactly right.

Melanie: We needed to put out some content that would identify with the rest of our state, so it was a great fit. 

Russel: I’ve watched a couple of the episodes that you guys have put out, and I’ve got to say they do go for that hillbilly redneck good old boy kind of, “Hey, look at this. Won’t this be funny,” kind of thing.

It’s very tongue in cheek. It’s clearly meant to be funny. It’s clearly not meant to be serious.

Travis: Wait, this is supposed to be funny?

Russel: Yeah, exactly.

Melanie: It’s definitely very much, “Oh, hold my beer. Hang on.”

Russel: One of the famous last words of a redneck, “Here, hold my beer and watch this.”

Exactly. You talked a little bit about doing this from a human perspective and making it funny and engaging and all of that. When we were talking before we got on the mic, I made the comment that this is a radically different way of thinking about pipelining because it is a very serious business.

We are dealing with critical infrastructure, what we do matters, all that stuff. It’s healthy to laugh at yourself, for sure. It’s healthy to laugh. How are you finding people reacting to the content you’re putting out? What kind of feedback are you getting?

Melanie: It’s been really special seeing the response to Tested By Travis because, sure, we have a good engagement that we get online.

Even more than that, we have people personally reaching out to us and saying, “Man, that content that you put out just hits the right spot. I can identify with this in a way that I’ve never been able to identify with any industry related content before in the past.”

We had one guy that reached out to our engineer, Josh Wilson, and he said, “I’ve watched this episode seven times. I just keep playing it over and over again because it’s so perfect.”

Obviously, it’s larger than life. It’s not exactly what we do on a day to day basis in the industry, but it just engages with that part of you, that deeper sense of community that we’re able to bring through a show like this.

Travis: I hear, at Allan Edwards, we’ve a lot of customers come through and check us out, check out the products, and I’ve had a few stop and ask for pictures. I was like, “What?” It blew me away a little bit because the rumors are that I was so awesome. I got red in the face.

Russel: I can empathize with that. When I started this podcast, which was back in 2017, before it really caught on and got big, we found ourselves in the middle of COVID. It wasn’t really until after COVID that I was going to the trade shows, and all of a sudden people are stopping me and they’re, “Hey, you’re Russel Treat. I know you.”

Because mine is all audio, they don’t recognize my face. They recognize my voice. In fact, I went to one of the labs and knocked on the door and a guy came and answered and said, “Who are you here to see?” I told him, and he goes, “Oh, you’re the podcast guy,” as soon as he recognized my voice. It’s really interesting.

My wife would talk about, “Don’t let the fame go to your head,” and I would say, “Darling, I’m micro-famous. I’m a little famous in the little bitty niche. I’m not broadly famous.” You have to be a geek to even know who I am. It’s the same thing, but it is fun. It’s a little strange, is it not?

Travis: Yeah, it’s very strange. Maybe one day, it gets to where it’s even a bigger thing. That’d be awesome.

Melanie: Definitely, Travis is still settling into his fame. We had to get him an Allan Edwards email. I know, Russel, before you had mentioned that, “Why does Travis not have a LinkedIn yet?” That’s a very good question.

Something that we’re definitely going to need to look into here in the future because, as the show continues to gain popularity, we’re going to need to adjust our tactics here and put Travis on the pedestal where he belongs. 

Travis: I would let you have a life size cartoon cutout of me here in the shop.

Melanie: Yeah, we do.

Russel: Oh, my God. That would be cool. You could do some animations.

Travis: We actually have a skit to go with it.

Russel: Oh, my gosh. It depends on how big of a marketing budget you have because we can all come up with great ideas.

Executing them well and consistently is a whole different conversation. Tell us a little bit about the episodes you’ve done so far. I know you’re just getting started, but what have you done so far?

Travis: In episode one, not “Star Wars,” but episode one, we had our OmegaWrap wrapped around a piece of cardboard pipe, and we actually ran it over with the owner’s truck, which is pretty awesome.

Melanie: How much did that truck weigh?

Travis: It was over 6,000 pounds. Then on our second episode, we actually had…It was about 8,000 pounds?

Melanie: 8,200 pounds worth of concrete weights basically that we hung off of the top and bottom of the OmegaWrap sample that again was wrapped around a piece of cardboard, so nothing to add to the integrity of the composite wrap. It was taking the full weight of the concrete.

Russel: A perfectly useless test. There’s no scientific value in this test at all…

Melanie: Absolutely not.

Russel: Which is the beauty of it.

Travis: Then the third one, which is my favorite one, is where I got to blow it up with two pounds of tenorite. It was pretty awesome.

Russel: Now, wait a second. How did you get your hands on two pounds of Tannerite?

Travis: That’s classified information.

Russel: I want to compare notes with Travis and understand what he used for detonation and timing and safety and all that stuff.

Melanie: We had a whole staff there, definitely. We definitely upped the ante on that last episode, so we had to.

Russel: I don’t know. It sounds like you’re setting a really high bar right out of the gate.

Melanie: I know. It’s like, “What will we do next?” 

Russel: Exactly. True. What will you do?

Melanie: Don’t worry, though, we’ve got some big ideas.

Russel: I’m very interested. Let’s talk about that after we get off the mic. You can tell me that. We’ll leave expectation for the listeners. They can wonder. How many more episodes do you have ideas for? Are you looking for ideas, or are they coming at you quicker than you can execute them?

Melanie: Oh, absolutely. We’re never going to turn down ideas. It’s always open lines of communication. We love getting ideas from our customers, from our friends, from our employees. We’ve got probably five or six lined up in the pipeline. We want to keep this show going for…

Russel: I have an idea for you.

Melanie: Go ahead.

Travis: We’re listening.

Russel: I think Tested By Travis should do something where you test rock damage.

Melanie: Test rock damage? OK.

Russel: You could take your repair around the cardboard, set it on concrete or steel or something like that, and then get yourself a cherry picker and drop rocks of different sizes on the repair.

Melanie: I love it.

Travis: It’s loaded.

Melanie: I’m sure we can find some great big rocks.

Travis: Yeah, we got some big rocks out there.

Russel: You might have to ship some of those big New England boulders in, the big 15,000 pound rocks just to see what happens, but that’d be entertaining.

Travis: Get one of the bodybuilders, lift up one of those big ones and drop it off.

Russel: That’s good. That’s reminding me of an old “Saturday Night Live” skit. Probably most people won’t remember it because it’s before their time. Anyways, it’s interesting when you start thinking about the things you can do and you can notionally associate it with something you actually see in practice.

Travis: Yeah, absolutely.

Russel: Fascinating. Let’s talk a little bit about where you guys see this going, and how people might use the content? Because it’s great that you’re putting together content that’s designed to be interesting and funny and engaging and all that, and of no particular technical value. That’s really cool.

Also, there’s probably some ways that could be used that maybe aren’t immediately apparent, like who would use that, or have you heard from anybody who’s sharing it in an interesting way that you didn’t anticipate?

Melanie: We definitely see some future applications for trade shows for events that we can host here at our facilities. The most important application for a series like this is that the pipeline industry, it’s just so heavily scrutinized. It’s a hard industry mentally to be a part of sometimes because there’s obviously the regulatory pressures, the political pressures.

What we want to do is we want to provide some relief where we can. When you’ve got an industry like ours, it’s just really easy to hammer on. It’s really easy to not make it the butt of a joke, but it’s easy to treat it with really heavy scrutiny.

We just want to show that we are proud to be in this industry. We are proud to do what we do. We’re going to show that, and we’re going to create that rallying point for our customers and our community to engage with.

Russel: That’s certainly a mission I can get excited about. There’s probably some opportunities. You never know how your content is going to be used.

I can certainly tell some stories in my journey about feedback I’ve gotten about the content and how it’s being used and what it’s being used for. Some of which demonstrate that the mission is working so much as completely outside of anything I would have thought about.

I would think that some of this content could be used to share with others that don’t necessarily know a lot about the pipeline business to help them explain a little bit about what we do in a way that’s not so much of what we do when you explain it, it’s so freaking technical. It needs to be.

Our business is technical business, but being able to share it in a way that it’s more fun and engaging versus purely technical. You don’t necessarily need to know how something works to know that it works.

Melanie: We had feedback from another one of our customers that got a big kick out of the episodes that we’ve done. He said that he just immediately ran to his wife and showed it to his wife and he said, “Honey, this is what I do. This is pipelining.”

He just loved being able to share that with her because sometimes you just don’t have the vocabulary to easily be able to communicate this is what I do. This is my life. This is something I’m proud of. A show like Tested By Travis really breathes some life in it and gives you a tool to show other people that, “Hey, this is me. This is my industry.”

Russel: Travis, what ideas do you have for how to make this more fun and engaging?

Travis: I would say more blowing stuff up because that was my favorite part, but I don’t know if we can just keep blowing it up. We leave a comment section for people who have ideas.

Russel: Are you the guy that when somebody says, “I dare you,” you’re the guy to go do it?

Travis: Unfortunately, I am absolutely that person.

Russel: I don’t mean to put words in your mouth. I’m just trying to tell you what I’m hearing is maybe you don’t come up with the ideas, but when people come up with the ideas and throw them at you, then you’re like, “Yeah, sure. Let’s do that. That sounds like fun.”

Travis: Yeah, that’s definitely me. I’ve got a few scars over here and there.

Melanie: We need somebody to double dog dare us with that next big idea, and then we will.

Russel: That’s what you need, the double dog dare input.

Travis: That’s elusive. I’ll use a triple dog dare.

Russel: That right there, that made this whole podcast worthwhile. That’s a million dollar idea. I offer it at no additional charge.

Melanie: I see a special feature, absolutely.

Russel: Yeah, the double dog dare form. 

Travis: It might become our show.

Melanie: Yes, Russel. Just make your way out to Allan Edwards, and we’ll host you for our next episode. 

Russel: I’ll have to go and dust off all my military explosives training, so I’m prepared to keep pace with Travis.

Travis: We’ll have it tested by Treat. 

Melanie: There you go.

Russel: I like it. I do like the idea of the double dog dare form. That’s freaking pipeliner gold right there.

Melanie: I’m seeing a holiday special, Tested by Treat – The Double Dog Dare Edition.

Russel: I have another idea.

Travis: We got a pen and paper.

Russel: The other thing I’m thinking about is a pickaxe. You start with one of the little bitty small pickaxes that people use in a rock when they’re playing with rocks and they’re like rocks, and then just scale up the pickaxe.

Travis: See how big we can get it.

Melanie: The thing is we have some high standards to exceed at this point because if there’s one thing that I can say about Chip, is that he is always the one, the go big or go more. He’s that person in our company.

Russel: Go big or go home?

Melanie: I can’t tell you how many ideas I’ve come up with, and he’s like, “That’s just…We need to make it more exciting. Let’s really get this show on the road.”

Travis: He’s like Will Ferrell from Saturday Night Live, “It needs more cowbell.” 

Melanie: Yeah. More flair.

Russel: If someone wanted to get in touch with you guys and offer some ideas, how would they best do that?

Travis: Absolutely. You can go to our Allan Edwards Facebook page, or our YouTube channel, which is allanedwards1947, and watch our videos, leave a comment in it. I believe you could go to our website and we have a contact page on there or a contact area you go in. You put in your little information you want us to do. If we love it, we’re definitely going to try to do it on our show in next episodes.

Melanie: Every time we release a Tested By Travis episode, we really do monitor the comments section. Anytime anybody leaves an idea, we do actually write those ideas down. We catalog them and we store them for future reference.

When you comment on an episode, whether it’s on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on our YouTube channel, we will absolutely take that feedback. We’ll share the link here in the podcast for the Contact Us form that you can fill out on our website.

Russel: Awesome. Just for the listeners, we will make sure that on the episode page in the show notes area, we’ll have those links dropped. If you’re having trouble finding them, you can just go to the Pipeline Podcast Network website and look up the Tested By Travis episode and you will find those links. What do you want to leave behind for pipeliners to remember about Tested By Travis?

Travis: Life is always serious, but you need to have a little bit of fun in it also.

Melanie: We like to break things and have fun while we’re doing it. Obviously, we test things, but we add a little bit of humor, a little bit of comedy to just make it engaging.

Russel: I love what you guys are doing. I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us on the podcast, and I’m looking forward to seeing what else you guys come up with that’s bigger and better.

Travis: Absolutely. Thank you. I wouldn’t advise blowing our product, but if you do blow up some other stuff that you have laying around, like a TV, why don’t you just film it and let me see it?

Melanie: We want you to actually use our products to fix your pipeline, to reinforce your pipeline. Probably not to actually do any destructive damage to it.

Russel: We are going to have to go get the lawyers to put the standard remarks here at the end of the episode, and don’t try this at home.

Travis: Please don’t try any of this at home. It’s adult supervision.

Russel: Don’t do it without adult supervision.

Melanie: Exactly. Call the Allan Edwards safety team. 

Russel: There’s probably an opportunity to do another podcast about the Allan Edwards safety team and them scrambling behind Tested By Travis.

Travis: They love it. They love it so much.

Russel: I bet they do. Guys, well, thanks so much. I appreciate your time.

Travis: Thanks so much, Russel.

Melanie: Thank you, Russel.

Russel: I hope you enjoyed this month’s episode of the Pipeline Technology Podcast and our conversation with Travis and Melanie. If you’d like to support the podcast, the best way to do that is to leave us a review, and you can do that wherever you happen to listen, Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, SoundCloud, wherever. You can find instructions at PipelinePodcastNetwork.com.

If there’s a  Pipeline & Gas Journal article where you’d like to hear from the author, please let me know either on the Contact Us page at PipelinePodcastNetwork.com, or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next month.

Transcription by CastingWords