March/April 1988
How-Tos for Healthier Trucks
Exorbitant costs and nonstop nuisances are just two of the joys of operating a truck fleet. But for whatever reason (and for better or for worse?), you’ve gotten your firm involved in this function. Here’s the basic framework for maintaining your fleet, keeping your trucks healthy--and in compliance with the law--and making you a less harried truck owner.
By Cap Grossman
Cap Grossman is treasurer of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries and president and chief operating officer of Grossman Iron & Steel Co., St. Louis, Missouri.
How did I ever get into this mess and why don't I pull myself out? That may be the most common question one asks himself if one is a scrap processor operating a truck fleet. No magic answers are apparent in the unfortunately familiar face of exorbitant transportation costs and unending annoyances.
Clearly one does not have to run a private fleet with all its concomitant problems of hauling scrap. There are other ways to skin the cat: hiring professional trucking firms, or leasing equipment and contracting for all maintenance service and repair work.
But, before you consider, daydream, or fantasize about alternatives to fleet ownership, you must concentrate on the key elements of your transportation needs. If you service industrial accounts or deliver to mills and foundries "just in time," dependability and flexibility are as important as anything else in your transportation management strategy. By running your own fleet you maintain control over these essential features, and you have the opportunity to do so in a cost-effective manner, as would anyone whose primary business is trucking.
There is no doubt about it: operating a truck fleet is an expensive proposition. Perhaps trucking is best left to trucking professionals. But many scrap processors contend that the many unique facets of our business make us best suited for the driver's seat; we should confront our transportation problems--or, put more positively, challenges--directly.
Addressing these challenges means a strong focus on maintenance. Most aspects of fleet maintenance are fundamental and straightforward. Some scrap processors have large enough fleets to warrant a transportation staff along with extensive investments in data systems dedicated to this department. But the majority of scrap processors run small to moderate-size fleets. Most companies cannot afford extensive specialized fleet management expenses, but many scrap processing plant owners and managers have learned that size should not necessarily influence the philosophy one has about operating the fleet. In addressing trucking concerns, common sense and fundamentals can prevail, just as they do with decisions on plant processing equipment. Sound management dictates seeking and benefiting from the experience and sophistication of the big guys.
Available from the trucking industry are countless resources that can assist you in developing transportation management systems and controls appropriate for your company size. Whether through trucking associations, private consultants, or local vendors and suppliers, finding answers tailored to your particular problems should not be difficult.
Sometimes, though, simply not recognizing the problems or not determining the degree of involvement you want to have in fleet maintenance is the biggest stumbling block. This article addresses the basic features of a maintenance program for your truck fleet, offering help in deciding not only the parameters of your programs but the depth and detail with which you choose to manage them.
First, a friendly word about the feds: As scrap processors running truck fleets, we are recognized officially by the government as private carriers. As such, we are obligated to have a working knowledge of the Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations governing our operations. The good news about this obligation is that by complying with DOT's basic safety requirements, you are already on the road to a fundamental maintenance program that will give you improved tools for managing your fleet. Conversely, if you already have implemented some simple maintenance management techniques, you should have little trouble with DOT regulations.
Maintenance Philosophy
Congress has mandated many ingredients of your maintenance philosophy. Now you must complete and implement that philosophy to haul your freight safely, economically, and competitively.
DOT tells you to check your equipment at regular intervals and to keep a history of these inspections. Since your trucks naturally wear out as you use them, these periodic inspections can help track that wear rate. You will be able to distinguish between the predictability of normal wear and the unpredictability of abnormal wear. Furthermore, the simple discovery during inspection of any problems with truck components allows for timely repair before their condition gets worse.
Prior to strict enforcement of federal safety regulations, many fleet operators held to a philosophy of repairing a truck only when it would no longer run. This thinking is no more viable than that at the other end of the spectrum, which would entail statistical replacement of every truck component to preempt all possible failures. The obstacles, variables, and undesirable elements we battle in the scrap industry demand an evaluation at both ends of the philosophy spectrum. We should choose a realistic middle position, a posture that allows for the routine of predictability as well as the flexibility and responsiveness necessitated by the unknowns of the abusive and unrelenting scrap environment. Simply stated, the objective of a maintenance philosophy should be to achieve maximum equipment availability, performance, and efficiency from a minimum investment of money.
In order to achieve success, your maintenance philosophy should incorporate the following elements into a cohesive program:
A preventive maintenance system that emphasizes regular interval inspection, lubrication, and adjustment.
A planning and scheduling system that uses inspection information and emphasizes communication and cooperation.
A shop staffing and outfitting system that offers effective response to the full array of daily breakdowns.
A recordkeeping system that focuses on equipment history through the tracking of major component life spans, types of repairs, and costs incurred in making the repairs.
Prevent That Repair: Inspect Regularly
The best place to begin when setting up your inspection programs is in consultation with the equipment manufacturers. You will find most of them extremely helpful in recommending the proper scope and frequency of your inspections and lubrications. If the manufacturers don't have preventive maintenance (PM) forms already developed, they can help you create them. Your forms should include not only a listing of items the manufacturer recommends you observe regularly, but also the things you know must be watched, based on your experience.
In addition to fulfilling state and federal requirements under DOT regulations, the daily driver report is the first and perhaps most important step in the inspection process. The driver spends the most time with the truck and logically should be the most familiar with its operation. Encourage your driver to help you detect as well as anticipate breakdowns. Your driver may not have the skills and expertise of a trained mechanic, but you still can benefit from his instinct and experience.
Most manufacturers recommend a thorough visual inspection and chassis lubrication at 3,000- to 4,000-mile intervals. More in-depth inspecting and servicing should be done between 9,000 and 12,000 miles, depending on your environmental conditions. Parallel inspections of your specialized equipment, such as lugger beds and roll-off trailers, can be performed at the same time intervals. The in-depth inspection and service should include oil and filter changes; here you should solicit the advice of your oil and lubricant supplier. Many of these companies offer an oil sampling and analysis program that should not be overlooked. It is an effective means for tracking engine wear and anticipating potential problems that otherwise could go undetected.
By just following these simple inspection procedures, you will not only comply with safety regulations, you also will have the foundation of a sound information communication and collection system--one that will unquestionably generate positive maintenance results.
Plan and Schedule, It's Time Well Spent
If you don't want to perform preventive maintenance with your own personnel, you can easily contract with an outside service to complete the work. This could be especially important if you don't have back-up units or the resources to set up an after-hours shift at your plant. Similarly, you can use outside shops to perform most of your repair work. However, since you will not be the only customer seeking truck repairs, you'll have to concern yourself with the shop's workload and ability to schedule you in.
Whether you use outside services or your own facilities, you'll find that energy spent on planning, anticipating, and prioritizing greatly improves the scheduling of repairs. Much less time is wasted waiting to get into a shop, and much less time is wasted while you're there.
Effective scheduling begins with a long-range plan, namely an annual budget. Truck fleets lend themselves much more easily to the budgeting process than does other scrap plant equipment, which is typically exposed to less discernible variables of wear and tear. There is a commonality to truck wear, which facilitates the process of predicting. You can take advantage of a wealth of informational sources from the trucking industry to anticipate normal wear, schedule repairs and overhauls, and compare the developing history of your truck units with what should be happening to them.
By starting with an annual outlook and plan, you can begin to budget dollars, manpower, and equipment availability. You then can further refine your scheduling on a monthly and weekly basis. As due dates for interval inspections approach, you can coordinate out-of-service times appropriately as you consider usage needs. Taking care of daily maintenance problems and keeping your fleet on the road is so much simpler when you think ahead. Your systems can generate good information; use them as tools for making better decisions.
Even the most diligent planning, cannot eliminate all equipment failures. But the more structured and organized your maintenance programs are, the easier dealing with these breakdown situations will be.
Dealing With Breakdowns: Choosing On-Site or Off-Site Repair
Obviously, you must first identify the nature and extent of the problem. Through thoughtful prioritization, minor repairs can be scheduled for a normal out-of-service time frame, allowing the unit to continue in operation as planned. If the failure could prohibit safe operation of the unit or result in serious damage, other action must be taken. At this point you must make arrangements for the repair by taking all of the following into account: the scope of the work required; your in-house capabilities; and the constraints of your operational needs. Sometimes you have no choice but to use the closest, quickest vendor. At other times the nature of the work necessitates more qualified outside services.
In-house repairs and outside vendor repairs each have advantages and disadvantages. Performing work on your premises allows for closer monitoring of labor hours spent on any particular job. Vendor repairs, done on a time-and-material basis, offer you no direct control over the amount of labor time spent. This is typically at a higher base rate, unless standard book repair times are used as a control. Moreover, the cost of parts purchased directly for in-house repair can offer a substantial savings--the repair vendor's markup is eliminated. Yet, there are definite advantages to using an outside vendor. These include specialized facilities and equipment, a more highly trained labor force, and warranties on most work performed.
Use of the outside shop can help you in controlling your staffing and training expenses, especially in some of the highly specialized areas of repair work. But these shops cannot necessarily meet every need you have. Many operators prefer to staff their shops at a level that allows them to perform the functions of PM inspections, lubrication, and minor repairs on the premises. By doing this, you can closely monitor fleet condition, while farming out more sophisticated work to reputable shops.
Perhaps Tedious, but Important--Recordkeeping
Without a sound recordkeeping system, you cannot successfully implement any other part of your maintenance program. You cannot satisfy DOT requirements, you cannot anticipate or schedule repairs. You cannot determine where best to have work performed if you have not accumulated in an orderly, structured manner information about past events.
DOT requires that you keep a file for each vehicle. The file must include all completed inspection, lubrication, and repair forms for a period of one year (or six months after the vehicle has been sold or permanently removed from service). Daily driver inspections must also be kept on file for at least three months as part of the maintenance documentation on each unit. In addition to observing these federal regulations (Section 396), you should consult your state highway patrol to determine whether other state regulations exist regarding maintenance records.
In 1986, Congress mandated audits of all commercial trucking operations within a five-year period. With heavy funding approved, DOT will be able to conduct on-site shop and recordkeeping inspections to determine your level of compliance. And, as we all know, the frequency inspections has increased dramatically, oftentimes resulting in costly fines and expensive out-of-service declarations.
The same records that satisfy DOT serve an even more important role in your maintenance decisionmaking process. Proper analysis of breakdown causes and repair costs makes even unforeseen problems more predictable over the unit's history. Patterns develop, and work can be planned accordingly; guesswork diminishes as you monitor more closely items that have proved troublesome in the past. In many cases, as the unit ages, you can pull the decision to replace rather than repair (or vice versa) from the realm of "seat of the pants" management. You'll have the records and analysis available to show the unit's current operating costs as well as to predict the time frame and scope of future repairs.
Analysis of your repair records will also help you in managing the efficiency of your maintenance personnel. You can use man-hour records to assist in your staffing decisions and performance evaluations. You can compare the work of your mechanics to that of outside professionals who have performed work for you. You may find out that some shops do certain work better than others or that it is more cost-effective to perform some maintenance functions under your direct control and supervision.
Although the development of a maintenance program consisting of the basic elements outlined in this article will help you recognize and control maintenance costs, many other key areas can be explored in your effort to reduce costs and run a more efficient fleet. Large-dollar items such as tires, lubricants, and fuel could be discussed at great length. Each must be scrutinized constantly, evaluating and comparing your past experiences, that of others in the business, and the never-ending advice of your suppliers as new products are developed.
A simple well-structured maintenance program will help you manage a healthier, more competitive truck fleet. Use all the maintenance resources available and rely on your good common sense, and you're sure to get the good performance and the fewer sick days you need from your fleet.
--Jim Johnson and Bill Trakas, maintenance supervisors at Grossman Iron & Steel Co., contributed to this story.