Apathy and the Art of Apparatus Maintenance

Apathy and the Art of Apparatus Maintenance

By Alan Perry

How does your organization manage vehicle maintenance? Do you fix it as it breaks, a system driven by complaints and failure? Do you let an independent or municipal shop manage it, a system frequently fraught with excessive cost and repair delays?  Do you manage it yourself, or some combination of the three? I have been working on machinery, cars & trucks professionally since I was seventeen years old. I have been certified as an ASE master auto and truck technician multiple times. I managed my own shop for 25 years, performed fleet maintenance on ambulances, and served as logistics officer for my rescue squad. As my interest in emergency services grew so did my interest in emergency vehicle service and maintenance practices. There are three primary goals when managing a fleet of emergency vehicles, safety, reliability and controlled cost. All of these goals are important and directly affect patients, providers and the organizations stability. I hope to convey to you some practical thoughts that can guide you to development of a rational, efficient and cost effective vehicle maintenance program that will suit your organization’s needs.

I have been exposed to all of the aforementioned strategies, some can be good, and some must be avoided. How do you decide? The person responsible for apparatus maintenance does not have to be a mechanic although a background in that area would be helpful, access to an honest and respectable technician or shop owner would be a reasonable alternative. The pitfall here is that the individual managing your fleet may not be up to speed with modern apparatus, vehicle engineering and effective maintenance strategies. Motor oil does not need to be changed every 3,000 miles anymore, buying cheap tires does not save money, preventive maintenance is not an oil change and tire pressure check, in other words what works for your mom’s car does not work for emergency equipment.

So what does an effective emergency apparatus maintenance plan look like, and what should you know going into this process? It will depend on your circumstances, climate, geography and type of equipment. You will need a thorough understanding of your equipment, the manufacturer’s recommendations for service, and the meaning of the terminology used. Record keeping plays an important role in tracking and identifying recurring needs and potential failures in your maintenance program, these records must be kept in sufficient detail to make the data useful. Simply keeping all the receipts in a folder will typically meet government requirements, but you need to go well beyond that if you are serious. A simple spreadsheet will usually suffice, at a minimum it should track fluid services such as engine oil, transmission fluid, coolant, brakes, tires and electrical system checks and repairs documenting the date, mileage, cost and reason for each service. If you collect the data for a period of several years you will notice patterns in certain types of failures, in this way you can predict both service life of certain components and potential costs involved. If you apply this data you will be able to schedule your services in advance of equipment failure reducing both cost and downtime, improving reliability of your equipment.

I have found that the 3,000 mile traditional service interval usually used for emergency equipment is excessive, it is frequently referred to as preventive maintenance, but very few actually adhere to the definition of that description with predictable failures occurring between scheduled PM’s routinely. So how do you fix that? It’s really very simple; you use the historical data for each unit and you change the nature of your PM to fit the definition. Change the maintenance interval to 5,000 miles, create a check list that the technician responsible for servicing the truck must complete, include all of the items that would normally be inspected during a state vehicle safety or DOT inspection on the sheet requiring documentation that each item is not only good, but will remain serviceable until the next inspection. This must include checking all the tires, brakes, lights, suspension, fluids and the electrical system. Any item that is not likely to remain functional and safe until the next service gets replaced right then and there. The overall goal here is to keep all of your equipment in the best shape it can be, improving reliability and reducing cost. I applied this very system to a fleet of 6 type I & III ambulances and saw a 20% reduction in overall repair costs each year for two years. Initially all the trucks rotated through the program took a little additional work to bring them up to speed, but the results were exactly as expected and the reliability of the fleet improved noticeably.

In contrast, let’s look at the typical municipal or private garage that is overworked and under budget constraints which frequently cause cost avoidance via delay or omission rather than an attempt to control cost via effective management of maintenance programs. Typically you schedule your PM, the truck goes in and gets the oil changed and if you’re lucky the primary fluids checked, you pick it up, and a week later you notice the state inspection is due, when you take the truck back they discover the rear brakes need to be replaced and the parts have to be ordered because they don’t keep them in stock. You pick up your truck a week later, it requires a jump start when you pick it up but keeps working for another week before the alternator burns up trying to accommodate the bad batteries. You see where I’m going with this? This is the typical result when the personnel or facility maintaining your equipment does not have a vested interest in truly maintaining the safety and reliability of your equipment; in fact they actually spend/make more money this way.

Your logistics officer or whoever is responsible for managing your maintenance program must be committed to a program that is proactive instead of reactive, and this individual must have the support of the organizations leadership to implement this type of program. You cannot manage ambulance maintenance like your personal vehicle or a garbage truck, there is too much at stake, the safety of your staff, the outcome for the patient, and the costs to the organization’s reputation and finances are at risk.

Happy motoring,