Heavy Duty Trucking, April 2019

APRIL 2019 HDT 59 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM cific applications and needs but also enabled consistent expansion as vehicles and fleet operations have become more complex Its a universal foundational platform agrees Daryle Shuford director of roadside fleet solutions FleetNet America I liken it to Beethoven If they can read music anyone on the planet can play Beethovens Fifth Symphony no matter what language they speak VMRS codes work in the exact same way Shuford says because of the elegance of the design fleet managers can use as little or as much of the codes as they need to get the information and the operational snapshot they need on a daily weekly monthly or yearly basis It really runs the gamut in fleets today he says We have customers who use the codes to take things all the way down to a component level But to us its a very powerful tool because we can record data from roadside events or breakdowns using VMRS codes to give our customers a complete picture of how and why this event happened FleetNet America technicians can key data into a system that syncs with fleet maintenance software to then paint a complete picture of why things are happening to vehicles and identify trends and patterns that lead to premature failures before they get out of hand We can point fleets toward the cause of a breakdown he says And then they can take that VMRS data combine it with their proprietary system and improve on that picture The more granular the data the deeper you can go into whats happening with your vehicles VMRS codes give fleet managers the ability to narrow breakdowns down to particular makes or even year models of trucks VMRS codes are the maintenance bible for maintenance operations at Southeast Logistics a long haul carrier based in Tuscaloosa Alabama Maintenance Director Bryan Golden uses VMRS codes to track trends and monitor failures by taking the data down to a component level in his reporting Its real power is that it allows us to go in and add our own internal codes to cuseral times as its functionality and flexibility have been recognized Today it is more accurate to call VMRS a structured coding system which uses a series of sequenced numbers to drill down as deep into a vehicle system or component as a fleet manager wants to go In its latest incarnation for example VMRS can accommodate up to 1000 distinct vehicle systems compared to the original 100 Its a very logical system that is relatively intuitive and easy to learn Poster says This has not only made it a boon for fleet managers who want to customize it for their speto allow multiple maintenance communications to have a single language to identify parts procedures and practices And they decided to use a numeric code at a time when computers filled entire rooms Given where weve come since that time and where were going they could not have come up with a better system Thats because VMRS codes in addition to being powerful communication enablers in the fleet maintenance world have proven to be wonderfully adaptive and expandable Since its inception in 1970 the code has been expanded and refined sev Thanks to the elegance of their design once VRMS code data is fed into a maintenance software system fleet managers can use as little or as much of the codes as they need to get the information and the operational snapshot they need on a daily weekly monthly or yearly basis PHOTO JACK ROBERTS