Swings and roundabouts: The Maintenance pendulum (Part 3)

Vehicle maintenance (VM) contracts are becoming increasingly popular within the transport industry. In our August issue, JIM WARD explained how dealers calculate and establish their vehicle maintenance rates. In September, he explained the role of the owners. In this, the third and final article in the series, he warns that any contract is a delicate balancing act…

Transport operators need to be aware of the pitfalls surrounding VM contracts. Examples of contract exclusions, which may lie deeply buried in the fine print, can include cab spares: handles, controls, the steering wheel, park brake valves, and trim panels. Components as mundane as grab handles, steps, a gear knob, or a glovebox cover are expected to last the life of the vehicle, but they are rarely designed with heavier, stronger people in mind. Mzansi raises some exceptionally large men! If a driver’s step is stressed many times a day by a driver weighing upwards of 125kg, having been designed for an expected weight of 90kg, it may simply break off. It’s fair wear and tear, not abuse, meaning the step is unfit for use.

Inside door handles get pulled off, winders are broken, sunroof clips snap off, switches and stalk controls get broken. Components never expected to fail and not deemed fast-moving stock are rarely covered in full maintenance contracts (FMCs) because – in their original countries – they don’t break. It’s a sad truth that many in this industry don’t know their own strength and will instinctively resort to brute force rather than learning a new technique.

Electrical components and diagnostic challenges

Electrical components like harnesses and Electronic Control Units or Control Modules (ECU, ECM) are often excluded from maintenance contracts. These are vulnerable because one simple mistake made during a breakdown, an incorrect jump start procedure, a wrong fuse rating, or just adding a new accessory can cause confusing problems with multiple fault codes. When diagnostics reveal multiple, intermittent fault codes, resolving these might require many hours of skilled, costly diagnosis.

Advanced commercial vehicles use CANbus wiring. CANbus (Controlled Area Network) is a communication system used in vehicles to enable multiple ECUs (Electronic Control Units) to communicate with each other incredibly fast, but without a host computer. CANbus enables quick and reliable information swaps between a braking system and engine, or engine and transmission. Differential signalling systems are extremely complex. A well-meaning “analogue” auto electrician might work on a vehicle using fault-finding methods that worked perfectly well on trucks 40 years ago, but the same approach can cause disastrous damage today. Something as straightforward as a battery replacement often requires the truck to be reprogrammed to adapt its charging system to the new battery. Dealerships spend millions on special equipment and software because they need it to diagnose and repair their vehicles; there is sometimes no other way to find modern faults.

Honesty breeds healthy dealer/owner relations

What is not excluded from the VM contract is fully covered, but the snag is that this might be what owners are least likely to need. Here, an open and honest relationship between dealer and owner really proves its worth, because owners – especially new transporters – need guidance through the complexities of different contract offerings, rather than trying to negotiate the pitfalls themselves. This, again, is where scrupulous honesty in the original FMC application becomes so important. The owner/dealer relationship can become oil poured on the fire when there are serious contractual disagreements.

If a vehicle that was expected to operate on tarred roads in light duty is transferred onto a heavy duty, arduous application, then certain components will wear at differing rates than expected, and specific damages will be noticeably worse than expected. Dealership workshops are not dumb; they will undoubtedly pick this up. Components wear at different rates, and the nature of activity significantly affects wear rates. Essentially, if the defined operating conditions stated in the application have materially changed, services will incur additional charges, and both the contract and warranty might be at risk. The owner is in breach.

Service histories can highlight inadequate cover

Service histories that manufacturers collate from their dealer network and global parts draw are also used to forecast failures. This information can also be used to exclude certain components from cover. Some manufacturers are more adept at this than others, tiptoeing across the minefield of vehicle ownership and cynically ensuring that whatever is fully covered will seldom be needed, but whatever is costly and liable to fail in service has been excluded.

Take a distribution versus a line haul operation: if a truck in the course of normal duty starts and stops 30 times a day, then the battery and starter will wear faster than a line haul vehicle that starts, drives 450km, and is then switched off until the next day. One has a duty cycle of about 780 events per month – the other, only about 40 per month.

If the truck’s starter motor was designed for 50,000 engine starts in its lifetime, the distribution truck’s starter will probably only last five years (64 months) before replacement becomes necessary, whereas the other, identical starter – idle for most of its life – might have only been used 2,400 times over five years and can reasonably be expected to continue working for many years to come. The former is worn out before the latter has even started to wear. Extrapolate this thinking to the clutch, gearchanges, and braking and one can understand how these subtle differences affect the maintenance rate, and why stop/start operations cost more to maintain than line haul, even though the kilometres are lower. In heavy traffic operations, even loadshedding and traffic light outages can influence gearchanges/100km.