{"id":9731,"date":"2021-02-09T19:31:23","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T18:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/?p=9731"},"modified":"2021-02-09T19:31:23","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T18:31:23","slug":"mobile-maintenance-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/2021\/02\/09\/mobile-maintenance-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile Maintenance: A Growing Tren"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo: Tom Berg<\/em><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

In the two years since he joined The Larson Group, Sean Westlake, director of mobile service, has seen the 21-location dealer group\u2019s mobile service business double. The dealership now has 30 mobile service trucks deployed across its network, which includes Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Carolina.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI believe the whole industry is going in this direction,\u201d Westlake says. \u201cYou will see more and more mobile service as customers demand it. They have less time to drop trucks off at the shop. It is much more valuable for them to have someone come to them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And he\u2019s far from the only one to think so. Bruce Croker, director of after sales at Peterbilt, says, \u201cIt is a way for us to more proactively take care of customers whose demands increase every year, especially as they apply to vehicle uptime.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Brian Conkle, service manager for Fyda Freightliner\u2019s Pittsburg location, says his dealership thought about adding mobile service for a long time before recently launching one truck in its market to make it easier to provide service to customers without adding brick-and-mortar locations. Another reason behind Fyda\u2019s move to mobile service was \u201cto offer customers another solution to keep their trucks moving.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s mobile service trucks are handling more than just roadside breakdowns. To Croker\u2019s way of thinking, \u201croadside repair is just the price of entry\u201d to the mobile service market. Fyda\u2019s truck and technician are able to \u201cdo 95% of what we do here at the dealership\u2019s shop.\u201d He adds, \u201cWe have invested pretty heavily in the truck, and the technician is a highly trained individual.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnything and everything\u201d is the way Westlake describes the services that can be handled by The Larson Group\u2019s mobile technicians. \u201cThe only real limitation is the skill level of the technician.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, it takes a technician with a special skill set to staff a mobile service truck. Not only do they need strong technical skills, but they also need customer service skills. Croker says Peterbilt provides training specifically geared to mobile techs. He adds, \u201cThey are essentially running their own service business, so they need to be fairly independent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Should you be taking better advantage of mobile service offerings? The first step is to assess your needs. Do you want the mobile service provider to deploy technicians to work in your shop? If so, will this be on a regular basis or as needed? What types of maintenance and repair work do you want them to handle? Just preventive maintenance services? Or other, more involved repairs? Or do you just want them to service the trucks at locations other than your shop?<\/span><\/p>\n

Once you have an idea of how mobile service can supplement your own service operation, begin interviewing companies that provide mobile service. Your existing selling and\/or servicing dealer is a good place to start. Ask them about their capabilities and what types of repairs they can do under the mobile service banner, the skill level of the technicians staffing the mobile service vehicles, the type of training they have received, and whether you will have a specific tech assigned to your fleet and the process for scheduling.<\/span><\/p>\n

When evaluating the cost of using a mobile service provider compared to bringing the vehicle into the service location yourself, make sure to factor in all the costs. At first glance, mobile service can seem more expensive. However, when you factor in the time and cost of having two people driving the truck to and from the service location, and the fact that those repairs can take days (because of other work being done at the service provider\u2019s location) instead of the hours it will take a mobile tech, you may find that mobile service makes sense from a financial standpoint.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the future, Westlake says, \u201cIn my opinion, mobile service is going to be the mainstream. You are going to smaller and smaller shops and more and more mobile service trucks in the future.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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by Denise Rondini<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/www.truckinginfo.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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FLEET MANAGEMENT AUDIT<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo: Tom Berg In the two years since he joined The Larson Group, Sean Westlake, director of mobile service, has seen the 21-location dealer group\u2019s mobile service business double. The dealership now has 30 mobile service trucks deployed across its network, which includes Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Carolina. \u201cI…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9733,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731\/revisions\/9733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}