Maximizing equipment uptime is always a goal for trucking fleets. Trucks make no money for a fleet when equipment is down. In today’s tight-capacity environment, out-of-service hours mean lost revenue.
With the added burden of a worsening driver shortage, it’s even more critical for the industry to have its seated equipment moving, with no trucks standing idle in the shop.
Truck equipment manufacturers, along with their component suppliers, certainly are stepping up to design and build products that are more reliable and, therefore, offer increased productivity as a result of less downtime for repairs.
Fleets that buy new equipment on a regular cycle can take advantage of those benefits to help their uptime percentage.
But regardless of equipment age, having skilled technicians to service commercial vehicles – both for routine preventive maintenance or when an unscheduled breakdown occurs – is always a critical factor in reducing unproductive time.
Questionable Repairs
One reason fleets often give for not outsourcing maintenance is they don’t believe the repairs will meet their standards. Many fleets actually bring the equipment back into their shop at the earliest convenience to double-check the work.
This clearly increases downtime for that vehicle by having it in the shop twice as long – once when it gets fixed and again to ensure the fix was done correctly.
How much downtime could be reduced if a fleet could actually trust that outsourced provider to get the work done right the first time?
Scarcity of Technicians
This brings us to another much-talked-about shortage in our industry – the lack of skilled technicians. As experienced technicians retire from the industry, a new generation of technicians is needed to fill the void.
One of the most important skills the new generation brings to the industry – if we can convince them to join us – is computer knowledge. These young technicians have a natural comfort level with technologies that can speed the diagnostic and repair processes.
With a scan tool and an online system, a technician can quickly diagnose a problem and then go straight to the information he or she needs to correctly complete the work.
A Big Challenge
As repair technologies have evolved along with equipment, keeping up with all the new features can be a big challenge for technicians. One way technicians can stay current with the industry is by having the latest repair information available quickly. All truck OEMs offer information covering their makes and models, and many fleets take advantage of these resources.
Information providers like Mitchell 1 make it their business to provide complete and up-to-date repair information for all makes and models.
Facilities that repair multiple makes and models can work more efficiently when they have repair information for all those vehicles available on a single platform. That is exactly what the latest online diagnostic and repair software for commercial vehicles is designed to do.
Mitchell 1, for example, has consolidated its labor estimating, trouble-code procedures and repair data into a single, web-based platform so there are no big binders to sort through or multiple websites to visit to find the information needed.
Repair Information
Over the years, as the volume of repair data has outgrown printed manuals and gone online, truck technicians have been challenged to learn a whole new way of accessing their repair data. The industry responded with programs like the TMCSuperTech National Technician Skills Competition, which has helped encourage techs to embrace the new technologies.
Mitchell 1 runs the Service Information skills station each year at the event, testing competitors on their ability to use its Web-based software programs to diagnose and fix vehicles properly. Mitchell 1 has been a sponsor of the TMCSuperTech since its inception and also supports and participates in many state technician skills competitions.
It Comes Naturally
The industry has come a long way since those first competitions where many of the technicians testing their skills were unsure how to navigate a computer screen, let alone use the software – and let’s admit it, we’ve all been there. But the new generation of techs doesn’t even need to think about what to do – it comes naturally to them.
As computer technology has pervaded our lives, veteran technicians also are using online systems to experience greater efficiency with access to an integrated source of comprehensive service information. That increased technician efficiency translates to increased uptime for the fleet organizations that employ them.
Clearly, any boost in technician productivity is good news for fleets as they face so many other complex factors in maximizing the productivity of their overall operation.
Scott DeGiorgio is the general manager of Mitchell 1’s Commercial Vehicle Group. Mitchell 1 (http://mitchell1.com) is a provider of quality repair information and shop management solutions to the automotive and trucking industries.
