Where there are trucks, there is often a maintenance shop. And when that shop doesn't produce revenue, there will be those who think they can cut its costs to save money. Especially when a fleet feels it needs to run extra, extra lean.

But not so fast. Tough times or not, say the experts, shop budgets are not meant to be hacked to bits nor raided like piggybanks on a rainy day.

“There are really two shop budgets — administrative and operating,” says Chad Johnson, vp-vehicle maintenance & purchasing for Ruan Transportation Management Systems (www.ruan.com).

“It's easy to cut administrative costs — you can get by with less travel or by not buying new office equipment,” Johnson points out. “But the shop operating budget is more complex. You can't stop maintaining equipment. If you don't keep up with it, you will pay for it later.”

Dick Carson, senior vp-fleet management solutions for Ryder System (www.ryder.com) reports that this year especially “a lot of customers want to know how to do more with less” in the maintenance shop.

According to Rick Muth, general service manager, and Jim Rawsky, manager of support services for Roadranger (www.roadranger.com), the goal for fleets must continue to be eliminating unscheduled maintenance and vehicle downtime.

Indeed, Darry W. Stuart, whose Wrentham, MA.-based firm, DWS Fleet Management (darrywst@aol.com) provides management services to fleets, contends that “more money is saved in the utilization of vehicles than in cutting out mils per mile in repairs. But,” he adds, “the reality is the fleet manager should be doing both.”

While each has different things to say on cutting shop costs, not to mention different perspectives on the industry, all these maintenance experts zero in on the human factor as the key cost-saver in the shop — now and always.

“Labor is the place to start,” Ruan's Johnson says flat out. “You can't be ‘fat’ here. You have to ask yourself, ‘Is the work force [as established] working?”

To help answer that tough question, Ruan partnered with Iowa State University to develop a statistical model that relates labor costs to an individual vehicle's year, make, model, life-to-date miles and annual mileage pace.

“Using this model,” Johnson explains, “we can show — actually predict — how many labor hours a week we will need to maintain a given truck.”

He says the model is not perfect because it “does not take into account the impact of newer low- and no-maintenance specs.” Nonetheless, Johnson states that Ruan's most successful shops are run along the model.

While the right numbers are nice, Johnson says experience also counts for a lot. “The most effective techs are the seasoned professionals,” he states. “They can save you time and parts by their mastery of troubleshooting. It's silly to replace veterans with entry-level personnel to save money. For one thing, an entry-level person does not have the experience to properly perform PM. You need the experienced tech to uncover potential problems.”

At Ryder, says Carson, “metrics are used to push the envelope — we want to increase the ratio of trucks to people maintaining them while still outsourcing very little.”

Key to helping Ryder get the most from its shop work force is tight management of work processes and strict attention to safety.

“We lay out seven-and-a-half hours of work for each technician even before they punch in,” says Carson. “We know how much work they should do and we give them constant feedback to help them do the best job possible. Maintenance work is best done preventively,” he adds. “The most expensive work is repairs on the road.”

Carson reports that Ryder places “a big emphasis” on shop safety. “For one thing,” he says, “if you have the [workforce] count right, you do not want people out due to factors you can control.”

Roadranger's Jim Rawsky says fleets can save money in the long run by not deferring investments in tools and training. “These are expenses that can't be easily valued but can too easily be deferred.”

Rawsky sees some sort of in-the-shop Internet access for techs as a cost-effective means of boosting performance. “There's a wealth of information for any vendor's product out there,” he remarks. “We always hear the last thing a tech wants is to be caught reading a shop manual. But maybe having access to web sites from a PDA would work.”

Roadranger's Muth points out that suppliers are also looking at various electronic means to transmit information to techs. “Providing self-paced training via the Internet or a DVD is one approach,” he notes. “That way training can be done a tech at a time instead of by emptying out the shop for a class.”

Rawsky adds that information supplied electronically is also invariably far more timely than printed matter. He notes that one OEM recently supplied its dealers with new service information on DVD — and made it easy for techs to use by also sending along DVD players.

While the tech's own experience and the training provided him are crucial to success, Darry Stuart cautions against discounting the part played by smart management.

“The average tech wants to fix everything like new,” he figures. “If that's the case in your shop, then you may as well hand each of them their own checkbook.”

Stuart says the fault for unnecessary or premature spending lies with management. “The typical shop manager dictates to, not communicates with, the techs. And that forces them to make the ‘safe’ choice that won't get them chewed out.”

The upshot is that harmony may be maintained onboard, but at the cost of knowledgeable workers effectively throwing money away by not speaking up.

At Ryder, Carson notes, a “committee meets regularly in each shop to review the components we buy and the service practices we follow” to gain the input of techs.

You can always save time and money by cutting down paperwork manually or with computers. But the experts agree there's one piece of paper, or computer screen, as the case may be, that should remain untouchable at all costs.

The preventive maintenance (PM) inspection report, whether filled out by hand or by touching a screen, keyboard or mouse, is regarded as the essential key to having — and keeping — a maintenance operation cost-effective.

“PM is sacred,” says Darry Stuart. “So much so that a fleet doing it properly should never find itself in a position where it has to consider cutting shop costs. Nonetheless, when the axes come out, everyone wants to chop the shop first.”

“The PM inspection is the single most important thing that can be done in the shop,” agrees Ruan's Johnson. “It's the secret to profits — you do not want a truck down for the sake of a 50-cent part.

“We maintain equipment as ‘new’ at all times,” he continues, “and that drives low running costs. Our PM inspection takes two-and-a-half hours to do correctly vs. 30 minutes that would be spent by a quick-lube operation. Our PM is about more than the engine — we want to see everything from the bumper back.”

According to Johnson, besides labor outside repairs is the “most volatile shop cost area to watch and that makes it the first place to look to save money.”

Carson says Ryder's strategy on PM is “to keep raising the percentage of work done on time, whether scheduled by mileage or time. Our latest goal is 95% on-time compliance. We figure every percentage improvement yields a dollar a month savings on each truck we service.

“A good deal of money can be saved by making a proper diagnosis from a PM,” he continues. “And we continually look for weaknesses in the design and engineering of vehicles as we inspect and service them.”

Darry Stuart says a surefire way to ensure maximum shop efficiency is to view each suggested repair to a vehicle as if it were for your own car.

“If preventive maintenance is done correctly,” he explains, “the tech will have the responsibility to bring forward what he has seen in a PM inspection. And it will be the responsibility of the person in charge to take the path of educated risk assessment to determine if a repair should be made then or held till the next PM.

“Taking the safe path — making every repair automatically — will put you out of business,” he contends. “The idea is to let it go to the next PM when you can, basing your decision on professional experience and knowledge of the vehicle. Trucks don't make money in the shop. The goal should be to make all trucks available to work all day, every day.”

Though often touted as a cost-saver, these experts do not see outsourcing as a no-brainer.

“OEMs led the charge to shift fleets away from feeling they needed their own shops,” Roadranger's Muth observes. “They were moderately successful at that, but many fleets have realized they need to understand which approach, or mix of approaches, is best for them.

“For example, a fleet that had concentrated heavily on its PM inspections and then outsourced that work,” he continues, “found it lost out on learning the idiosyncrasies of its operation that strict attention to PMs can reveal.

“It might pay to contract out specialized work, like component repairs and rebuilding,” says Muth. “On the other hand, fleets often have techs adept at other areas, such as electronics, who can do that work as well as anyone.”

Ryder's Carson suggests looking at the whole picture when considering outsourcing. “You want to evaluate how things are done now and compare that to a third party coming into your shop or moving the work totally outside. Usually, a combination is the answer.

“If a fleet does outsource maintenance functions,” he adds, “it should leverage the provider for its advantages — such as parts stocking, training and warranty administration.”

Carson says Ryder avoids outsourcing from its shops because “we'd rather control the scheduling and quality of the work ourselves. If anything, we have increased the work we do ourselves.”

He cautions those considering outsourcing that “there are big differences among established providers and their programs and those who are new to the business or offering it as an add-on service.”

Putting an even finer point on it, Ruan's Johnson says, “You can outsource-but be sure to use the right partner. Independent shops may charge a lower labor rate than dealers, but there's no one answer.

“The right decision may depend on the size of the fleet and its existing operation,” he continues. “For example, the smaller the fleet, or a given shop, is, the less able it may be to manage variability. That is, they may not recover quickly if one tech has to be put on a major engine repair. So, for them, it would make sense to send that work out [rather than upset work flow].

“Internal engine work is usually best left to distributors, who do that work every day,” says Johnson. “Otherwise it's a bit like having the family physician perform open-heart surgery.

“It may also make perfect sense to outsource work requiring a low skill level, such as tire mounting and similar chores,” he adds.

While Johnson believes outsourcing has its place, skimping on parts inventories does not. It can amount to a false economy. “We have a shop automation system in place that buys and stocks parts automatically,” he relates.

“Some fleets shrink inventory too much,” Johnson adds. “But it does not save to run to a dealer for parts six times a week — especially if you're sending a tech to get them‥ The thing to do is to set levels based on slow-moving vs. highly used parts.”

“You should entertain outsourcing,” advises Darry Stuart, “when you do not have enough vehicles at a given location to sustain the overhead of the facility and the mechanics employed there. Outsourcing is clearly a mathematical decision. It's about doing what supports the operation.

“The essential thing with outsourcing,” Stuart adds, “is to manage it. A fleet that is a well-oiled machine can do both — have shops in some places and outsource in others — based on what works best for that operation and not on emotion.”

Indeed, when it comes to controlling shop costs, emotions will not carry the day. Only informed and involved management will.