UPTIME:How Up Is Up?

Smart operators will expand their vision of what levels of uptime are available.

Once upon a time, perhaps a week or two prior to the implementation of deregulation, uptime was a nice idea practiced by a handful of truck operators who had access to some meaningful cost and operating information. For most truck operators, however, uptime wasn't a really big issue; there was always some spare equipment parked here and there to fill in when something went down.

Today, however, it is an entirely different issue. Practically speaking, nobody has spare equipment; it is either on the road or off the property. Yes, I know, lots of trucks were purchased last year in anticipation of the 2007 engines, and some of these may be parked. But that's little more than a temporary phenomena, which will disappear with the next uptick in freight movement.

What is uptime, anyway? The Random House Dictionary of English Language (itself about the size of a small truck) defines uptime as: "The time during which a piece of equipment is operating or can be operated."

Random House goes on to add, "The time during which an employee is actually working." I think I'll leave this one alone. How do you differentiate when an employee is deep in thought – or sound asleep sitting up? Beats me; and I'm pretty good at sleeping sitting up. OK. Now I'll leave it alone.

The ultimate uptime for a Class 8 tractor would be to fire it up and run it, and stop only to refuel, switch drivers and swap trailers. Refueling trucks on the fly was done successfully 75 years ago by Clessie Cummins at Indianapolis, so why not today? Put three drivers in a sleeper rig and that eliminates stopping to switch drivers, even with today's HOS regulations (food and potty breaks need to be figured out, however). Drop and hook time is all that's left.

MacKay & Co.'s recent survey of nearly 1,000 operators of medium and heavy trucks indicated their utilization rates were pushing 87 percent in the first quarter, off a bit from last year but up nearly 13 points from the early '90s. And this includes a group of vehicles in relatively low-intensity applications like municipal and utility vehicles.

What's making this possible? Better equipment, better components, better maintenance, better information – and much better management. Every truck-using vocation is more competitive today than it was a decade or two ago, even those trucks operated by municipalities and utilities, since outsourcing is a viable alternative. So we should probably add better competition as another causal factor driving higher utilization rates – and greater uptime.

Talking about automatic slack adjustment makes all of us think about brakes. But today it's more than that – it's become a management philosophy. Taking up slack, increasing utilization and uptime, is a prime management task across the industry. With profit margins as thin as they are in most truck-driven businesses, picking up a point or two of utilization by reducing uptime is critical to the bottom line. Sure, running over a porcupine will screw up a steer tire in a hurry – to say nothing of screwing up the porcupine's day as well. But, overall, the loss of uptime from unplanned tire failures can be sharply reduced with the right tire management discipline supported by the right equipment.

How much better is today's equipment? Twenty-five years ago, the average Class 8 diesel power unit managed to accumulate about 275,000 miles before the first engine overhaul. Today's engines – again, on average – will go about 650,000 miles before being unbuttoned. That's an average. There are plenty of high-mileage rigs that will rack up well more than a million miles before the heads come off or the pan gets dropped. Performance like this translates into much higher levels of uptime – but it doesn't happen automatically. It takes a focused, conscientious control and maintenance system to see that it does happen.

Maybe we'll never see three guys in a sleeper rig refueling on the fly and crossing the country in 48 hours. But we will certainly see the smart operators expand their vision of what levels of uptime can be available – and put systems in place to make this happen. That you can count on.