Heavy Duty Trucking, April 2018

APRIL 2018 HDT 71 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM the available charging isnt in the same spot Dollmeyer explained He doesnt expect internal combustion engines to disappear anytime soon and in fact predicted increasing use of hybrids to allow for vehicles that can run on electricity in the cities but have extended range for operating outside of low emissions zones Penskes Hasinec noted that some challenges related to maintenance of alternative fuel and powertrains include diagnostics tooling availability training facility design charging fueling infrastructure OEM support and reliability The good news Dollmeyer said is to expect there will be less maintenance for battery electric vehicles There are simply fewer parts to maintain or repair Hybrids however can do the opposite adding systems that mean more things to break down One company probably has more experience with alternative powered last mile delivery trucks than any other UPS Its rolling laboratory of alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles is about 9000 around the world from electric bicycles to renewable natural gas and propane Duane Lippincott oversees training for UPS maintenance personnel at more than 1400 shops in the U S with more than 5000 technicians Every time we get a new technology theres a new tool list and new software for the computer he said Shops need to be upgraded to handle things like natural gas and electric charging More space may be needed for additional parts inventory Training is of escalating importance Lippincott said We must be moving forward faster and faster than we ever have before Showing a slide of a fleet of electric trucks that UPS ran in the 1930s Lippincott said Whats old is new but the new is new in a whole new technological way If I depended on the training from the 1930s vehicles for todays shop it wouldnt work too well Maintenance centric fleets have a new benchmarking program they can use to compare their operations to other peer grouped fleets TMC and FleetNet America are partnering on the new program which makes heavy use of TMCs VMRS Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards coding for consistency across the data The TMC FleetNet Vertical Benchmarking Program will allow motor carriers and other types of fleets to compare their unscheduled roadside repairs with those of comparable fleets through an online dashboard By tracking what systems are failing and comparing that to similar fleets the study will help fleets better understand the effectiveness of their overall maintenance operation Roadside breakdowns are a good indicator of whats going wrong in the shop said Jim Buell executive vice president of sales and marketing for FleetNet This benchmarking exercise is a not only a great way to see how your maintenance program stacks up against your peers but it provides a clearer view of your own situation Buell provided some examples of data collected from October through December 2017 where a select group of truckload fleets shared aggregated data on unscheduled roadside repairs through a common data warehouse using VMRS codes Data collected was broken down by miles run between breakdowns and miles run between repairs in several categories including tires lighting brakes towing and cold weather TMC FLEETNET AMERICA PARTNER ON MAINTENANCE BENCHMARKING BETTERPLANNINGPredictive analyticsand actionableinformationmean greaterequipment uptimeand strongercompliance tmwsystems com phone 18004016682Contact Us