Being Prepared and Eliminating Breakdowns

July 1, 2014
Rental people interviewed for this month’s cover story pointed out that contractors are more squeezed than in the past. Budgets are tighter, deadlines are more exacting. Now more than ever, they can’t afford downtime.

A few years ago United Rentals extensively surveyed its customer base to find out what was most important, and one of the top three issues that came up was promptness in delivery. I’ve heard the same issue expressed by others, especially in this age of communication. “You were late delivering the equipment and you couldn’t let me know? You don’t have my cell phone number, my e-mail address, you couldn’t send a text?”

Rental people interviewed for this month’s cover story pointed out that contractors are more squeezed than in the past. Budgets are tighter, deadlines are more exacting. Now more than ever, they can’t afford downtime. An occasional breakdown is to be understood, but repeated breakdowns suggest the rental company is not maintaining its equipment as it should, and there is no excuse for that. So along with the pet peeve of late delivery comes the question of response time. With so many tools at the rental company’s disposal, what possible excuse can be acceptable if the response time isn’t considered fast enough?

Years ago rental companies often didn’t have enough service trucks. Clearly, not having enough service trucks no longer flies. If you don’t have enough service trucks, what are you doing in the rental business? That’s like not having enough equipment. In the past when that service truck arrived on the jobsite, very often the mechanic would have to find the item. Shouldn’t be a problem now with GPS at its disposal. Then there is the question of diagnosing the problem. With electronic fault codes and available telematics systems, often now the mechanic will know exactly what the problem is before he even sees the machine.

Those methods are not always foolproof, so sometimes the service technician will have to do some trouble-shooting. Years ago, after determining the cause of the issue, the mechanic often had to go back to the shop because he wouldn’t have the part needed with him. These days service trucks are very well stocked, and the tech is probably expected to carry most of what he would need with him. He hits the jobsite with a wide range of parts, hose-making kits and most of the fluids likely to be required.

If the repair is going to be more complex, there is a good chance today’s service tech will know that before he gets to the jobsite, so the company will send a replacement machine along. That’s the level of efficiency that is increasingly expected by today’s customer.

Obviously, rental companies can’t be perfect and things happen. Some days there are more breakdowns than usual, or service techs are out sick. Sometimes certain parts aren’t available and have to be ordered. This is not a commodity business. It involves machines and parts that break and human beings that get sick or make mistakes. The contractor on the jobsite deals with similar issues as the rental company does. But expectations are higher.

One of the points made by some of the service personnel I interviewed for this month’s cover story is that their rental companies are keeping track of how long it takes to respond to a breakdown and figuring out ways to be quicker. But not only that, some of the customers are keeping track as well. So while they understand about the issues and problems that can cause a delayed response, they tend to forgive those shortcomings once or twice, but not often.

Impressive to me, in the preparation of this article, are the efforts rental companies are making to improve the performance of their service departments. Rental companies are using telematics to diagnose machines in the field, they are using electronic codes to diagnose issues, they are more aggressive than ever about making sure preventive maintenance is done in a timely manner. They are making more effort to see that service techs are trained properly on the machines they are working on, that their training is keeping up with the levels required by more sophisticated machines. Keeping service techs trained on the latest developments is surely one of the most worthwhile investments a rental company can make.

And how about a product health center, such as Louisiana Cat has, that employs a program called Condition Monitoring, which sets up maintenance and repair plans, and analyzes data from fluid analysis, and more?

There is a long way to go to improve in this difficult business. There is still so much to learn when it comes to understanding how to repair equipment quickly and make sure it runs for a long time without breaking down. But the progress the industry is making is extremely impressive.