History

History of Mine Safety Associates

          Mine Safety Associates was founded in February 1978 in Price, Utah by Leland Gotfredson. Leland was the safety director for the U. S. Fuel Company at its coal mines at Hiawatha, Utah. He had worked in the coal industry for almost 8 years—four years as an underground coal miner and four years in management. Leland held fire-boss, mine foreman and electrician papers.

        The 1977 Act had just gone into effect, so after publishing a newsletter called the Mine Safety Digest for four months, Leland quit has job and tried his hand at consulting. “I thought that the metal and nonmetal mines would want to know what I had learned in the mines under the 1969 Coal Mine Safety Act,” Leland says. While consulting is now a good business, back then people weren’t interested. The metal and nonmetal industry didn’t think that MSHA was going to be any different than MESA (the agency that preceded MSHA.) “They said that MSHA wouldn’t issue any citations or assess any penalties. I told them that the coal companies had thought the same thing and now some of them were out of business,” he remembers.

 

 
     

Leland, as young assistant safety director, 29 years and 40 pounds ago!

  
            In 1979 Leland came up with the idea of the "pocket editions" of the 30 CFR.  He says, "Some people say that 'Necessity is the mother of invention.'  But in this case it was, 'Starvation is the mother of invention.' "

        With over 500,000 copies sold, the "pocket editions" have become the industry "Bible."

  
 

Leland with gear which he wore and used as an underground coal miner.

      

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