Businesswoman and first responder Leah Puckey still works six days a week and devotes time to care for her father. Born and raised in Newcastle, Puckey now lives in Damariscotta where she just joined the town’s budget committee. (Sherwood Olin photo)
Leah Puckey spent a good deal of the first half of her life knowing exactly where she was supposed to be and what she was supposed to be doing. After realizing a change of plans in 2007, she has spent much of the last two decades figuring out what comes next.
Puckey grew up in Newcastle expecting to devote her professional life to the family business, the John A. Puckey Oil Co, an independent fuel oil dealer founded in Damariscotta 1939 by her grandfather and his business partner at the time, Ed Collins. She was barely 35 when she realized she needed a change of plan and, with her father, Jack Puckey, decided to sell the business.
“Really it was my place for my whole life,” she said. “I was driving trucks before I even learned how to drive a car.”
By the time Puckey started in the business, the industry had changed from the days of calling for a refill only when needed and paying the bill in cash and in person. When she got out, volatility in the marketplace led some suppliers to adopt fixed-rate agreements requiring fuel oil dealers to dabble in speculation.
In order to make a fixed-rate possible for their customers, suppliers needed to commit to a retail price well in advance of the heating season, betting they correctly estimated the wholesale market price for fuel they committed to buying for their customers months earlier.
Squeezed between the stress of the economics and the strain of customer relations, Puckey said she knew she needed to make a change.
“It wasn’t fun anymore. Before it was,” she said. “People would just call up. They want their delivery. We go do it and they pay their bill and that’s it. Then it got to the point where … oil prices just went volatile, and they would just call and scream and yell and just really insult you, that it was our fault that their oil bill was so high.
“Then the big companies started moving in, and they were offering pre-buys and caps, and it’s like, ‘Great,’” she said. “So I had to jump into the futures market, and I hated it. I gave the people what they wanted. They wanted fixed pricing, and then the price of oil tanked, and they were stuck with a high price, and again, the phone calls, the name calling, the screaming, the yelling. I’m being a crook and I’m done … I took it personally. I wasn’t some idiot on the phone. It was my company.”
Talking with her father about possibly getting out of the business, she was surprised when Jack Puckey agreed, saying he was thinking about retirement. Finding a Dead River Co. business card “way in the back of the desk drawer,” they called the regional dealer and offered to sell.
It took eight months of negotiations and due diligence before the sale was finalized on June 8, 2007. Dead River agreed to keep all of Puckey employees on and retained Leah Puckey to work in the local office to provide continuity for existing customers.
For Puckey, the second she closed the deal she felt the weight lifted off her shoulders.
“The day I signed the papers in Portland, it was like a sense of freedom,” she said. “I just can’t explain how that felt. It was like having freedom for the first time. It felt really weird … I can go on vacation now and before, I’d walk into a hotel. Then they had the newspaper stands in the entryway with all the papers, and it was all about the oil business skyrocketing, and I couldn’t enjoy myself, right? I kept worrying of what was going on back home. Even when you’re home, your mind is still there, thinking and planning.”
Today Puckey still works in Dead River’s Newcastle office Monday through Friday, performing many of the same functions she did when she was self-employed. With the major exception of the mental stress, selling the company changed very little about Puckey’s working life, she said. The strong exception was the move from Puckey Oil’s final office from Depot Street in Newcastle to Dead River’s current offices at 685 Route 1 in Newcastle in 2023.
“I was still in my old office when we moved from Academy Hill to Route 1,” she said. “That’s when it hit me. Two years ago, I told them I would move alone. I wanted to be alone. I would move all the stuff myself. I told them to stay in Brunswick, because I knew it was going to be emotional, and it was.”
Puckey said she is grateful Dead River maintains a Newcastle office, allowing her to work near home in the event her father needs her assistance.
“They have been very nice to let me stay in Newcastle, because they know my dad,” Puckey said. “(Sometimes) I have to run home and help him up and make sure he’s OK and then go back to work. So they’re very good about letting me stay in Newcastle and not move me to Brunswick.”
When she is not working, Puckey keeps a low profile. She likes to kayak when she can, snowmobile when the seasons allow for it, and get to her camp in Monson, which she has owned for the last 20 years.
A basic emergency medical technician since 1988, Puckey said she renewed her license earlier this year, thinking she would work another two years before winding down her EMT career. However, she recently joined the Monson Fire Department and as a result, may retain her license for a couple more years to come.
“I got to know the people, and they’re super nice, and made me really feel comfortable,” she said. “So now I’m like, well, all right, I’ll keep doing it a little longer, just a little longer so I can hang with them a little more than two years.”
Puckey first obtained her EMT license when she joined the Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service as a 17-year-old. Puckey said she would have joined the fire department at that time, noting both of her grandfathers and her father were all fire department members. Her maternal grandfather Elbridge Verney was a past chief of the now-defunct Sheepscott Fire Co. and her father Jack has been active in the Newcastle Fire Department since 1958.
“The only thing that would get my dad out of the oil truck was a fire call,” Leah Puckey said. “So I grew up there and I wanted to join. Back then, it was a guys’ club and shockingly, even my dad even said no, so CLC was the next best thing.”
When she is home in Damariscotta, Puckey works six days a week – Monday through Friday for Dead River and Sunday and Monday overnights shifts for the CLC Ambulance. On those overnight shifts, she leaves the station long enough to go home, change her clothes, and then go to work in the Dead River office. On a good night, there are no ambulance calls and the overnight crew can get something akin a full night’s rest. Other nights there are multiple calls and no time to sleep.
Including her home in Damariscotta, which is located in a housing development off Bristol Road created by her paternal grandfather John A. Puckey, the Monson property is one of three properties Leah Puckey owns. She also owns a condominium in Yellowstone, Mont.
Eventually, she said, she hopes to divide her year into equal parts between Damariscotta, Monson, and Montana.
Puckey landed in Montana in the late 2010s. Separated and on the way to an eventual divorce, Puckey was looking for an extreme change of scenery. Having traveled widely in America, she initially started in looking for a home in Alaska. Based on the advice of a Realtor, she changed her focus to the lower 48 and ultimately found the place in Yellowstone.
Puckey noted the purchase preceded both the popular television show of the same name and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“I signed electronically, and my dad and I went out a month later,” Puckey said. “I’m up on an upstairs level and just came out of the shower. My dad’s hollering at me, and there’s like a herd of buffalo, bison just sauntering around. We watched and we waited, and they just kind of moseyed on through. They just hang out in people’s yards, eating the grass and the trees. Here, you see your deer, and it’s cool, but out there you got a bison in your yard. If you go outside, you have to watch where you step. It’s just incredible.”
More recently Puckey was asked to join the Damariscotta Budget Committee. Puckey said she is looking forward to the task but she fully expects to be outvoted. As a Lincoln County native, Puckey said she is very aware of the tax impact of budget decisions, as opposed to newcomers to the area who vote for services they want without regard for the taxes.
“They have taxed a lot of the locals out,” she said. “Someone two houses up sent an email to the association. We’re an association down in here. The wife is from Russia. He’s from here. So they spend a couple years here, a couple of years there, back and forth. This was their time to come back and they said, ‘We love you. We love our street. It’s just the taxes, and we’re going stay in Russia, so we’re selling our house.’ I thought way to go. They would rather live under Putin than under the Damariscotta selectmen.”
Puckey herself is frugal, fiscally conservative, and can be very direct in person, she said.
“My whole life I was never able to voice my opinion, because you’re in business and you can’t make anyone mad,” Puckey said. “So, yeah, I mean I’ll keep my mouth shut to a point, but after that, it’s like, ‘All right, I’ve had enough of this foolishness.’”
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