Under the pressure to get trucks back on the road as soon as possible, shops sometimes focus on the quick fix rather than taking the time to do a complete analysis of why the failure occurred. In other words, they fail to get to the root cause of the problem, which means it is likely to reoccur.
A relatively simple place to begin a root cause analysis is with tires. Your scrap tire pile can provide a wealth of information.
Tires should be scrapped because of old age. Every tire in your scrap pile that is there for any reason other than it has reached the end of its useful life needs to be examined to determine what caused it to fail. Was it a misalignment problem? The result of underinflation? From a road hazard? Once you know the real reason for the failure, you can take action to correct the real cause of the failure.
See also: Time to bust tire inflation-pressure myths
Obviously, not all failures are preventable—road hazards are usually unavoidable, for example. If you are seeing a lot of failures from tire inflation issues, work with your drivers to make sure they are properly checking the air pressure of all tires—even those hard-to-reach inside tires in a dual tire configuration. You may also want to consider installing tire pressure monitoring or inflation systems on your tractors and/or trailers.
Another step you can take is to look at all unscheduled service events. Determine what failed and why. Investigate if there had previously been a problem and review how it was repaired the first time. Was time taken to look beyond the presenting complaint to look deeper at the root cause? You want to avoid the band-aid approach to repairs and have technicians get to the real cause of the problem rather than simply addressing the symptom.
During times when shops are under pressure to get trucks back on the road quickly, there can be a tendency to not take the time needed to do a full analysis of the problem. Don't sacrifice accuracy for speed. When the root cause of a failure is found, the truck won’t keep coming back to the shop for the same problem, which will save time in the long run.
Another tip is to pull DVIRs and preventive maintenance reports from vehicles that were brought in for an emergency repair. Review them to see if drivers or technicians identified potential failures and if so, investigate why that information was not acted upon. Take time to retrain your drivers and techs on how to properly perform inspections in order to identify problems in their early stages.
See also: It’s time to reinforce inspection basics
When you systematically look for the root cause of failures, you likely will end up with fewer of them because you will have addressed problems before they resulted in breakdowns. And that will keep your trucks on the road where they belong.
Jane Clark is vice president of member services for NationaLease. In this position, she is focused on managing the member services operation as well as working to strengthen member relationships, reduce member costs, and improve collaboration within the NationaLease supporting groups. Prior to joining NationaLease, Clark served as area vice president for Randstad, one of the nation’s largest recruitment agencies, and before that, she served in management posts with QPS Cos., Pro Staff, and Manpower Inc.
