Donahue Truck Center manages about 2,000 service events monthly at its six locations across California’s Central Coast, Central Valley, and Wine Country. While this presents a management challenge for the company, it is succeeding through its use of management technology, offering quality and cost-effective service solutions for a diverse customer base. The Hino truck dealer is also a dealer for Allison and Cummins, as well as an Idealease truck leasing resource for customers of every vocation.
“We provide everything from preventive maintenance to major repairs for all types and sizes of customers, from large nationwide package delivery and fleet management companies to smaller, local operations with one or two trucks,” said Randall Edgeworth, director of parts and service. “Small companies make up half of our business. Our service territory ranges from the Napa Valley to the Mexican border, but our locations are all focused on having tight knit relationships with customers and the communities we serve.”
Donahue Truck Center’s service facilities are open ten hours per day and are staffed by highly trained and experienced technicians. Each location offers maintenance and repairs, and 24/7 emergency road service for established customers. Also available are welding and fabrication services for frame modifications, and body installations on new and used chassis.
The dealership service department also offers mobile maintenance with service trucks fully equipped with tools, lubricants, and parts, offering customers the efficiency of having routine maintenance and repairs performed at their locations, at their convenience.
“We focus on technician retention by being the kind of company they want to stay with,” Edgeworth stated. “That’s led to very low turnover, and a stable, knowledgeable service team. When we do need to hire technicians, we advertise online, but many of our recruits come to us by word-of-mouth references. While we always have some new people on our staff, many of our technicians have been here for more than 10 years.
“Manufacturers also support our technicians and our service operations,” Edgeworth continued. “We’re in direct communication with them all the time. Through things like Hino INSIGHT remote diagnostics we have tools to streamline service events, and when a technician has an issue with a vehicle they can call on Hino Tech Assist, which puts experts at their disposal in minutes.”
Hino Managed Parts Inventory is also in use at Donahue locations. This program is hosted by third-party provider PartsEye, a web-based inventory planning and management system that utilizes current and past parts usage and other measurements to optimize inventory at the lowest possible cost. Through its SmartCast forecasting tool, the solution determines optimal parts inventory levels for each of the dealership’s locations.
“PartsEye has helped us decrease obsolescence and inventory costs,” Edgeworth stated. “It also improves technician productivity and customer satisfaction because repairs are not delayed while we’re waiting on a common part.”
Donahue relies on the Fullbay heavy-duty repair shop management software and PartsEye to automate weekly stock orders. Overall efficiency improved when the dealership began using Fullbay software to manage its parts and service department at the beginning of 2020.
Fullbay drives the service order workflow at Donahue facilities, including receiving customer service requests electronically and generating work orders and assigning technicians. After technicians enter diagnostic and check-in information on tablets, the software automates the estimate and approval process, which customers can access online.
In addition, Donahue customers can use the Fullbay portal to monitor the service and repair process stages as they are in progress or completed, as well as complete truck repair histories. The software also manages sending estimates with standardized labor times to customers and creates invoices by integrating with Donahue’s accounting software.
“We use Fullbay to build performance reports based on monthly data analytics,” Edgeworth also related. “Those are issued to each location to measure and manage efficiency and productivity. In just a little more than one year, the data has led to steady improvement in several key areas, which is important because each of our locations is a distinct profit center. More importantly, it has huge value from a customer service standpoint because it keeps the customer in the loop on repair progress.
“That type of communication is one thing that gives us an edge over the competition, and it’s part of the reason our parts and service revenue grew by 20 percent in 2020,” Edgeworth said. “It’s all part of our drive to create long-term relationships with our customers by providing the best service available.”
