Maintenance Bay: Dealer support

Owner/president: Butch Loflin
Company: Loflin Concrete, Kerners­ville, NC
Operation: 50-truck fleet provides concrete products and related delivery services

PROBLEM:

When it comes to truck maintenance, Butch Loflin says the trick is knowing when to do it yourself and when to let someone else—like a dealership—take care of it. And that’s especially true when it comes to concrete mixers and dump trucks, vehicles Loflin is intimately familiar with. His father started Loflin Concrete, the family business, back in 1969.

After his father passed away in 1985, Butch took over the reins of the company and has guided it ever since.

Loflin Concrete employs two technicians who take care of almost everything on his firm’s trucks. Yet the key word is almost. They work on the hydraulic systems that turn concrete mixer drums or raise and lower dump bodies, repair power take-offs, change oil and other fluids, work on clutches and axles, and even take charge of gathering up company drivers on a rainy day to clean equipment.

“You’ll hear them say, ‘If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean,’” Loflin says. “Keeping it clean appeals to our customers and helps with resale value.”

Several areas of truck maintenance give Loflin pause, however: engines and clutches, because of their complexity, and parts inventory, because it ties up money that could be better invested elsewhere.

SOLUTION:

In each case, Loflin outsources work and parts inventory management to local dealer Piedmont Truck Center. In fact, Piedmont has been Loflin’s dealership for the company’s almost-47-year history. Piedmont is now helping Loflin switch over to Western Star iron powered by Detroit-branded diesel engines. The company currently operates 12 Western Star models: seven 4900 tractors and five 4700 cement mixers.

Loflin says it takes a lot of expertise to work on engines and clutches, and constant training is required to keep up with ongoing technological advances. This is further complicated by the fact that Loflin’s trucks operate a variety of engines, e.g., Caterpillar, Cummins, and Detroit brands among them.

The transition over to one brand of truck and engine will help reduce such complexity. Getting the dealership to manage Loflin’s parts inventory is also helpful, since that reduces a large monetary investment without sacrificing vehicle uptime.

“About 90% of the time they have what we need in stock, but if they don’t, we’re right next to the airport and Fed­Ex, so we get great delivery response,” Loflin says. “If you get good service and good products, you stick with it. That’s what we’ve done.”