UPS Saves 330,000 Quarts Of Oil
Annual oil savings add up to $3 million in the bank.
Jim Winsor
Executive Editor
Whenever United Parcel Service does something, it usually does it in a big way. Take the recent revamp of its preventive maintenance program, for example. UPS dramatically reduced the number of oil changes in its "package cars" (UPS term for its route delivery vehicles), thus saving 330,000 quarts of oil and $3 million annually.
And that's just on its 70,000 package cars.
Shortly, they'll start revising the PM program on 10,000 Class 8 road tractors - and they expect to come up with substantial savings there, too.
How did UPS come up with revised PM procedures that translate to such dramatic savings? According to Larry Flahardy, VP of Fleet Maintenance for U.S. Operations, UPS restudies its PM programs every five years. This is a moving target, with some new package cars added and some scrapped. New technology entering the fleet brings savings at the front end, but many UPS package cars we see every day may be in their second decade of service.
UPS runs its delivery vehicles as long as 25 years, then scraps them - which means much of the fleet is well over 10 years old at any given time. The package car fleet is still predominately gasoline powered. The larger package cars are diesel powered and the newest of the smaller units include 5,000 new Mercedes Sprinters with five-cylinder Mercedes diesel engines. Flahardy says UPS currently has nine engine types in its delivery fleet ranging from 4.3-liter gasoline engines up through Cummins 5.9-liter B series and International 444 V-8s.
Under the old program, package cars were brought in every eight or nine weeks for a basic "A" PM service - sort of a one size fits all program. Mechanics are assigned a group of vehicles and drivers usually get behind the wheel of the same truck daily. This "team" approach has worked well at UPS for many years and there are incentive programs with nice rewards for those who have no shop visits between scheduled PMs. And when vehicles do come in, mechanics have detailed PM procedures to follow, allowing a maximum of two hours for a complete "B" service, which includes lube, oil, filters, load testing batteries, etc.
The "new" UPS maintenance service is built around the oil change requirements for each engine family and type of service that vehicle is in. UPS has eliminated its "A" inspection entirely, which was a mini "dry" service with no oil changes. The new customized service for each vehicle was tested in one UPS district for 18 months and modified as needed until it was perfected. The new program, according to UPS' Automotive Engineering VP Ron Kirby "essentially gives each vehicle its own fingerprint. It is based on a detailed matrix of vehicle characteristics including engine type, vehicle group, miles driven, days since last service, manufacturers' oil change recommendations and other engine service requirements.
"This process allowed UPS to better gauge how frequently each vehicle type needs an oil change. Some vehicles were found to need less frequent oil changes, providing the net savings of 330,000 quarts," Kirby said.
UPS' proprietary Automotive Information System (AIS) notifies mechanics when each specific vehicle should come in for its PM service. The program removes guesswork in planning labor for vehicle repairs, parts usage and even estimating fuel usage.
Eliminating the "A" service entirely means most package cars, depending on their own footprint, see a maintenance shop about half as frequently as before. UPS uses premium greases and gear lubes and CI-4 engine oils as part of its program.
It will be interesting to see what UPS' next-generation PM program looks like for its 10,000-tractor fleet. Many of them are now on 40,000-mile oil drains, according to Flahardy.
Some of them are in high utilization operations accumulating 1,000 miles, five days a week.
