The Lifeblood of Fleet Reliability
Extend component life and reduce cold-weather failures by treating fluids and lubricants as a strategic maintenance priority.
Fluids and lubricants are generally part of a fleet’s preventive maintenance (PM) checklist along with assessing tires, brakes and other wear components, helping to ensure that vehicles don’t experience unscheduled downtime.
“The reality is that fluids are an integral part of the fleet business, so whether it’s engine oil, engine coolant, transmission, all the fluids in a drivetrain system – all of those play a key role in that vehicle getting to the job and then back to home base safely at the end of the job,” said Greg Loew, fleet manager at Spokane, Washington-based Avista Utilities.
Fluid and lubricant management is part of an overall fleet maintenance strategy, with some fleets relying on vendors to run their PM programs while others operate in-house garages.
Fleets that depend on external vendors should “use the appropriate fluids and lubricants as recommended by the manufacturer, ensure proper levels are maintained, and service as needed based on the operating conditions of your fleet,” advised Chris Foster, director of fleet management services for Holman (www.holman.com).
In most scenarios, fluid/lubricant choices are limited to those used in the maintenance vendor’s facility, he noted. “This underscores the importance of developing a comprehensive vendor strategy to align with trusted national account maintenance providers who can support your specific vehicles and operating parameters with a consistent approach to fluids and lubricants.”
Fleets with in-house services typically have greater flexibility to design a program that suits their operating environment and capabilities. Use of fluids that meet OEM requirements eliminates the risk of low quality.
“Technicians should conduct a thorough analysis to determine how many types of fluids and lubricants are necessary to keep on hand at your facilities,” Foster recommended. “In-house technicians can analyze the performance of vehicles’ fluids and lubricants during routine maintenance to potentially adjust service intervals to further optimize the maintenance strategy.”
Inside Avista
Loew oversees about 1,400 fleet assets at Avista, including Class 1-8 trucks, trailer-mounted equipment and a few electric vehicles. The average company pickup truck runs about 8,000 miles per year, compared to the national passenger car average of just over 11,000 miles per year. The utility’s EVs, still under factory warranty, are taken to the dealer for regular service. Gas and diesel vehicles are serviced in-house at least every six months depending on mileage or hours.
“We’re going to touch the vehicle twice a year whether it has 5,000 or 5 miles,” Loew said.
When Loew began managing the fleet a few years ago, PM was based on time between services. As telematics and analytics capabilities have grown, maintenance is increasingly driven by data. Avista currently integrates telematics data into its fleet management information system (FMIS) to track each vehicle’s miles driven and, in most cases, engine hours.
“Our system is now adaptive to look at a unit with high utilization maybe every three months, compared to a unit that’s getting very low miles,” Loew explained. “Still, we’re going to look at a low-utilization unit at least yearly to make sure that the required inspections are completed on it, but we don’t need to bring that unit in for a full periodic preventive maintenance service on the same basis as a high-utilization unit.”
With help from the FMIS, Avista has integrated the manufacturer’s recommended service schedule into each vehicle’s maintenance plan. “We can see what services will be needed up to six weeks out, and we start to populate our on-deck list, and we know that work that needs to be completed,” Loew said.
Manufacturer duty-cycle guidance dictates most fluid changes. In the past, Avista may have changed transmission fluid at 50,000 miles as a preventive measure. Now the utility follows the manufacturer’s recommendation of 150,000 miles, even for a severe duty cycle.
“We were doing transmission services too often, and at several hundred dollars for each vehicle, that was a really expensive fluid change that wasn’t necessary,” Loew said.
The FMIS has also helped Avista home in on factors that lead to severe-duty cycles, which require closer attention. Loew found it was more about idle time than mileage or weather extremes. Outside of light-duty vehicles, idling typically accounts for 40% to 60% of vehicle engine time.
“While idling has always been a factor in cold weather, it’s recently been increasing in summer to provide cooling for employees in hot weather,” according to Loew.
Stricter fuel-efficiency standards have prompted manufacturers to build tighter tolerances into their engines, which require high-performance, low-viscosity oils. There is no substitute for fluids that meet manufacturer specifications.
“Today’s vehicle components have specific tolerances that require very specific fluids and lubricants to operate effectively,” Foster said. “You should also look to purchase your fluids and lubricants in bulk whenever possible to leverage volume pricing and minimize costs.”
About the Author: Gary L. Wollenhaupt is a Colorado Springs-based freelance writer who covers the transportation, energy and technology sectors for a variety of publications and companies.