Mission critical maintenance

This month, we’re following up from our previous articles with TR Group because it was felt that something was missing from the truck leasing puzzle – the ongoing issues of maintenance.

“Having the right vehicle built to carry out a specific role and delivered on the day is important,” says national sales manager for TR Group, Shane O’grady, “but there’s more to it. We need to be sure we are handing over the right vehicle for every day its in service until it reaches the end of its lease.

“Even then, because we on-sell the builtfor-purpose trucks after their lease term is up, we need to make sure that when a truck leaves our care, it’s in the best condition it can be.”

Within TR Group, there are 12 maintenance managers and then another 12 in maintenance support, which probably makes the frontline maintenance team the largest division within the group – that’s how seriously TR Group considers maintenance to be.

Mike Colman who leads TR Group’s Maintenance support team talked us through the group’s customer- centric approach.

“After the vehicle is in service, we are the first point of contact with the lease customer,” explains Mike. “Any customer requests or issues get communicated clearly by us to the maintenance services team, whose job it is to liaise with the workshop and service providers to get the work done as quickly and effectively as possible.”

Beyond this, Mike’s team also liaises with the OEMS and service providers, preserving that vital connection too.

“Since we implemented the single contact point system, the information flow has been excellent, and our customers are winning as a result.”

Truck maintenance is a bit of a science and not something you can do if you look at it with the “fixing it as it fails” approach most take with car maintenance.

“We can’t work like that,” says Mike. “Each truck we provide has a preventive maintenance programme scheduled for it and any additional equipment. Our preventive maintenance schedules go above and beyond those of the OEMS – they have to.”

A point of difference with TR Group’s preventive maintenance programmes is the integration of another TR Group division, Masterdrive. “We don’t just deliver a series of dates and times for servicing,” clarifies Mike.

“We want to make sure the actual users of the vehicles – the operators

– know how to look after the vehicles properly in between service intervals, identifying potential problems and improving their skills at the same time. Masterdrive provides guidance based on its professional training credentials and real-world experience, to ensure drivers are preserving the asset they are using.”

Sometimes unscheduled maintenance events just happen, and TR Group responds accordingly.

“Say for example, a truck comes in with a blown injector. It’s running on the other five, so we could replace the faulty one, bolt the engine back together and send it back out, but there’s a high probability that another injector might fail prematurely as a result.

“We’d rather take the hit, spend the money and replace all six injectors at the same time. It’s not going to take any longer to do and we know the truck is in the best state of operation it can be.”

And we asked the question, so you don’t have to: who pays for the extra five injectors?

It’s on TR Group. As a lease customer, you pay your lease rate per month and if there are extra service items needed, TR Group will cover it.

Happily, this is an uncommon occurrence, the result of careful build management practises and processes, but things happen, and it highlights why preventive maintenance is so important.

“If any of our leased vehicles spend time off the road,” Mike continues, “that hurts. It hurts our customers and it hurts us, because our customers have banked on us getting the right vehicle to do the right job for them and their business. When downtime

through unscheduled servicing does occur, we try our hardest to minimise or eliminate any inconvenience to our customer.

“If a leased truck requires workshop downtime, we can draw off the TR

Group rental fleet to provide a temporary replacement vehicle. This is not ideal, we know, but its recognition of a significant problem for our customer and a very tangible demonstration to show the customer we have their business interests and requirements at heart.”

Shane adds to this: “The reality of heavy vehicles is that they do breakdown. When that happens, our reaction is critical: how quickly we respond, what our plan is to resolve the situation, it’s a paramount consideration. That’s the reason the maintenance team is on deck 24/ 7, 365 days a year. There’s always someone here for our customers.”

“The goal is to ensure our customers trucks go from regular service to service without any unscheduled work needing to be carried out,” says Mike, who doesn’t look like a man carrying the weight of being responsible for 6,500 + vehicles with even more maintenance schedules.

“It’s not just our leased vehicles we look after,” Mike explains. “Many of our customers own trucks as well as lease them from us. We offer managed maintenance services for company-owned trucks as well, but this is not a standalone service, we will have leased trucks with the same customer.”

Another service TR Group’s maintenance teams offer is that of ‘swing’ parts, to further ensure reduced downtime.

“We hold a vast array of swing components for issues that we know through experience are likely to happen across makes and models. From significant issues like gearboxes and engines to minor ones like seats and bumpers,” explains Mike. “In the event of say, a gearbox failing, we would have the truck delivered to a service centre along with a swing part transmission. This way, the workshop can fit the replacement part and get the truck back on the road, which again, minimises disruption to our customer and takes pressure off the workshop who can repair the original gearbox and return it to us, ready to go without having to rush through it.”

Mike explains that in the event of a vehicle being off the road for an extended period of time (longer than 96 hours) TR Group has a choice of protocols: either credit the lease payment back for the term the truck is off the road or organise one of its rental vehicles until the leased truck is back in service – for free.

And speaking of free services, TR Group has recently upgraded the MYTR webbased information portal, with tailored fleet information available via secure user name and password access.

“MYTR gives the customer access to immediate, real time information,” says

Mike, “allowing them to keep an eye on the fleet from a scheduled service, maintenance and compliance viewpoint. It provides an electronic paper-trail so that Health and Safety documentation requirements are met, and vehicle use is optimised.”

In the final analysis, TR Group has established itself in terms of experience expertise and specialist knowledge in every aspect of heavy vehicle leasing over the past 26 years (happy anniversary this month BTW), which is why it is the largest and most trusted heavy vehicle provider in the country.

They’ll be there when you need them.