Shop efficiency starts right outside the office door for Jeff Harris, the vice president of maintenance at carrier USA Truck. Knowing the location and status of the assets is a big part of that efficiency, so at the company’s seven shops, there are established staging areas that identify which tractors and trailers are waiting for repairs, parts or outsourcing, Harris explained.
“This way of organizing vehicles eliminates wasted time finding or moving units into the shop.” Harris said. “With a quick look we can tell the make-up of our workload and where each unit is in the service process.”
Across USA Truck’s shops, 115 technicians service over 1,600 company tractors, 450 owner-operator vehicles and 5,500 trailers. Among the Van Buren, Arkansas-based carrier’s seven locations are four new facilities opened in the past three and half years.
Vehicles arriving at a USA Truck shop first pull into a prequalification lane where technicians investigate driver complaints and conduct a walk around inspection. Diagnostics are handled with Noregon JPRO software and fault code data is entered on touch screens placed strategically between bays. Additionally, an Alpha MUTT (Mobile Universal Trailer Tester) from Innovative Products of America is used to test lights and air brakes on trailers.
“Once we determine what work needs to be done, technicians generate a repair order in our TMT Fleet Maintenance software,” Harris explained. “Vehicles needing repairs that will take 45 minutes or less are sent to a quick lane and for longer repairs they are moved to a staging area. We also estimate the time it will take so operations can make an informed decision whether to repower a load or switch the driver to another truck.”
Other organizational practices at USA Truck shops designed to save time include rolling shadow boards with common tools and other items. These are staged at specific locations marked with painted blocks on the shop floor. By being able to roll the board to a bay, Harris related, tools are closer to the technician because they’re not all in one central location, and they’re better organized.
“We’ve also addressed parts storage,” Harris added. “For example, there is a supply of replacement mud flaps in quick lanes, and shelves for high usage items in PM pits. We also have dedicated racks for steer, drive and trailer tires so technicians can quickly see what’s in inventory and what’s needed, and that speeds up replacement processes.”
USA Truck employs centralized parts purchasing programs using an approved vendor list. Stock order requests based on pre-determined minimum and maximum inventory levels and local purchases are made by each maintenance facility’s parts supervisor. Tire purchases for the fleet are also overseen company-wide by a program manager with purchases made from approved vendors at every location.
“Standardized equipment specs, especially identical powertrains, help reduce the type of parts we need in inventory,” Harris said. “They also lead to less need for technician training because except for the cab they’re seeing the same systems and components in every truck. At the same time, we see training programs as a way to invest in people and let them see they have a path to move up in our organization.”
USA Truck, Harris noted, strives to be highly competitive when it comes to recruiting technicians. “We currently have 14 openings at our seven facilities and we’re always looking for new help to maintain an optimal tractor to technician ratio,” he related. “We have a corporate recruiting department person assigned to maintenance to help with that effort, and we offer pay increases and other benefits, as well as awards.
“Those awards are based on annual reviews of technician productivity,” Harris continued. “They enter labor time on touchscreens so individually and at a shop level we can look at direct and indirect labor, and downtime. We share those numbers and our progress toward meeting goals.”
Quantifying time has produced measurable benefits at USA Truck. To evaluate the time spent on a routine PM, for example, the fleet outfitted a technician with a pedometer to count footsteps and created a diagram of the technician’s path around the truck. By analyzing the information, a change in procedure to reduce steps resulted in cutting a four-hour PM down to one hour and 45 minutes.
“All of the measures we use let us know how we’re performing, and where we can improve,” Harris said. “You can only fix a problem when you identify the cause and respond effectively.”
