Key points

• Marathon Petroleum’s Knoxville asphalt terminal earned its first Volunteer STAR Award from the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the state’s highest honor for workplace safety and health.
• The award recognizes sites that demonstrate exceptional commitment to safety performance and ongoing improvement in health and safety programming.
• This recognition follows a multi-year safety journey that began in 2021 and places the terminal among just 35 Volunteer STAR sites in Tennessee.

Marathon Petroleum’s Knoxville asphalt terminal has been recognized with its first Volunteer STAR Award by the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration (TOSHA), the state’s highest honor for workplace safety and health.

The Volunteer STAR Award, modeled after the federal OSHA Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP), is presented to sites that demonstrate outstanding commitment to safety performance and continuous improvement in safety and health management systems.

“Receiving the Volunteer STAR Award for safety is a great honor,” said Knoxville Asphalt Terminal Operations Manager Sean Phelps. “This award highlights our terminal's strong dedication to upholding the highest safety standards and safeguarding the well-being of every team member. It reflects our commitment to a culture where safety is a shared priority and everyone looks out for each other, and is a testament to teamwork, diligence and collective effort that makes our workplace safer for all.”

“It’s a daily reminder not only of our commitment to safety, but of the teamwork and dedication that brought us here.”

TOSHA Deputy Commissioner Dewayne Scott visited the Knoxville site on May 15 to present the award.

“We set the bar very high for this award and Marathon Petroleum rose to the challenge and not only met but exceeded TOSHA’s high standards for workplace safety in Tennessee,” said Scott. “It takes a tremendous amount of effort and determination from everyone at the facility to create and maintain a safe and healthy workplace at this level.”

In 2021, the Knoxville terminal received the Tennessee Governor’s Award for Excellence for Workplace Safety and Health, an award recognizing the site for working 50,000 hours without a lost workday or restricted duty injury. That achievement prompted TOSHA to visit the terminal and introduce the team to the Tennessee Star Program, marking the beginning of their journey toward this latest safety recognition.

This most recent recognition places the terminal among just 35 Volunteer STAR sites in Tennessee. Along with a glass award and certificate, the team also received a STAR flag to fly at the site, a symbol of the terminal’s strong safety culture and the effort behind it.

“It means something very special every time we raise that flag,” Phelps said. “It’s a daily reminder not only of our commitment to safety, but of the teamwork and dedication that brought us here.”