St. Joe Gas expanding
Jason Shoaf, owner of St. Joe Gas, with J.T. Phillips and Carl Hopper delivering old propane tanks to Wakulla High’s welding program.
By CHARITY TUMBLESON
Reporter
St. Joe Gas will soon open a new office at the old Bay Leaf Market, 19 Shadeville Road in Crawfordville.
St. Joe Gas provides propane deliveries to residential, commercial, and industrial customers. They also install underground and above-ground appliances as well as propane appliances.
The owner of St. Joe Gas, Jason Shoaf, plans to open within 60 days and is already serving customers in Wakulla. “We’ve already started,” Shoaf said. “We’ve already got nearly over 100 applications from businesses, restaurants, downtown district, and residentials.”
(In addition to St. Joe Gas, Shoaf, of Port St. Joe, also happens to represent Wakulla in the state Legislature.)
St. Joe Gas has been in business for more than 50 years and started in the natural gas sector, serving the paper company and surrounding businesses. In 2010 St. Joe Gas started its propane division.
“Started from scratch, starting where our natural gas mains couldn’t go,” Shoaf said. “We grew that business and served most of Franklin County.”
St. Joe Gas opening in Wakulla will be the first time the company has expanded.
“We’ve always been located in Port St. Joe,” Shoaf said. “My brother and dad and I are the three who run the company, so it’s family-owned and the field is that way too. We’ve got a lot of our employees who have been with us for over 30 years.”
One of St. Joe’s Gas employees, Carl Hopper, is third generation working with the company.
“Serving this area in the legislature has given me a perspective of 11 counties, being able to see what are good places to grow a business in, what are good communities you want to be a part of and I fell in love with Crawfordville,” Shoaf said.
St. Joe Gas recycles the tanks that cannot be used and donates them to local high schools for projects and fundraising opportunities in the welding program. He was dropping off tanks at Wakulla High School on Friday for use by the school’s welding program.
“Whenever we have tanks out in the field and they get to a certain point where we feel that they’re not safe to hold pressure, we’ll gather them up, take them to our storage yard, and wait till we’ve got a bunch of them,” he said. “I would take these over to St. Joe High School and we did some in Perry, and now that we’re moving here, we’re going to start bringing them here.”
Roscoe Grant the welding instructor at WHS plans to repurpose one into a grill.
“You can turn them into a really nice firepit,” Grant says. “It’s a good program for the kids, I’m proud of it. We started this thing and it’s growing it’s getting bigger. It’s getting a lot of community support kids to love it parents love it.”Grant says.
Shoaf spoke of employment opportunities in St. Joe Gas for the future welders in the program: “We want to hire kids out of your program. On our natural side, we do a lot of pipeline welding. We hire welders, we hire plumbers, and electricians because we do full service for appliances we do it all. If it burns gas we will work on it.”