Blog Archives




 

  • Working With the Army
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday October 2, 2008
    The big news at the recent Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) Fall Meeting in Nashville (besides the crowning of this year's SuperTech winner) was the announcement that TMC is partnering with the U.S. Army on a four-year, $12 million project to study "Condition-Based Maintenance." What is conditon-based maintenance, you ask? Well, it's not reactive and it's not predictive (the transportation industry wastes $25 billion on unnecessary PM and unrealized cost-reductions on predictive maintenance, according to TMC's man on this project, Duke Drinkard); instead, it's based on the real-time condition of the component. Or, as the Army's representative Paul Skalny said, it's "maintenance based on evidence." According to Drinkard, the...

  • Tribology 101
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday September 11, 2008
    You may not know what "Tribology" is, but it affects your business every day. In fact, it plays a huge role in your fleet maintenance costs. Tribology, for those of you who don't know, is the study of friction. The word comes from the Greek word "tribos," which means "rubbing," and rubbing is serious business when it's taking place inside an engine or a gearbox. Tribology was just one of many topics covered yesterday at a "Tech Day" event held by Shell Lubricants in Houston, TX. The folks at Shell invited a group of journalists to tour their Westhollow Technology Center in Houston, and on the tour we got a basic grounding in friction and rubbing and what Shell is doing to combat these forces. It might not sound exciting to you, but to a...

  • SuperTech2008 is Almost Here
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday September 4, 2008
    Now that the entry deadline has passed for SuperTech2008, the national technician skills competition put on by the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC), the excitement surrounding the event is starting to build. In 12 days, about a hundred technicians from all across the country will gather at the TMC Fall Meeting in Nashville, TN, to show their stuff, and to compete for the title of SuperTech 2008. This year's event will be bigger and better than ever, with technicians competing in 14 different skill areas: Electrical/Electronics; Brakes; HVAC; Engines; Steering & Suspension; PMI; Drivetrain; Service Information; Tire & Wheel; Wheel End; Starting & Charging Systems; Work Order; Fasteners & Repairs; Safety & Environmental. The...

  • The Urea Blues
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday August 28, 2008
    My blog about Cummins' flip-flop on using selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and urea in its 2010 heavy-duty diesels has spurred some interesting comments about urea, the mysterious blue liquid that will soon become as much a part of the heavy trucking industry as EGR and DPF have. A few of those concerns I can comment on here, but a few will have to remain open questions until we have some real-world experience with urea. Going back to the conference call in which Cummins announced its new product plans, there were a lot of questions about urea, and a lot of tacit admissions that using urea in heavy trucks may not be a walk in the park. Back when Cummins had previously announced that it would only use an SCR/urea system in its...

  • Reversing Course
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday August 14, 2008
    Do you buy Cummins' engines in your heavy-duty vehicles? Were you counting on avoiding the whole SCR/urea issue in 2010 buy spec'ing Cummins ISX engines with enhanced EGR? Hate to break it to you, but you're going to have to rethink your plans. Yesterday Cummins announced that it is changing its strategy for meeting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2010 diesel emissions requirements for lower NOx levels. The company had previously announced that it would meet the 2010 standards for its medium-duty engines using selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and urea, while its heavy-duty engines would rely solely on enhanced EGR and therefore avoid the use of SCR and liquid urea, which many consider cumbersome and inconvenient. The beauty...

  • The Best Thing Since Seat Belts
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday July 31, 2008
    Okay, quick quiz: What's the difference between "Roll Stability Control" and "Electronic Stability Control?" Do you know the answer? Here's a hint: Roll Stability Control (RSC) is sometimes referred to as "roll-only stability," while Electronic Stability Control (ESC) is sometimes referred to as "full stability." Still stumped? Well, you're not alone. It turns out a lot of fleet professionals have a hard time distinguishing between the two, which is why Bendix has recently published a white paper (available here within the week) called “Road Map for the Future: Making the Case for Full-Stability.” The new paper, as Bendix described to the media in a conference call this week, will help fleet managers understand how the systems...

  • How to Change the World
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday July 24, 2008
    The other day I visited Madison, our state capitol, to meet with Maria Redmond, the Biofuels Sector Specialist for the state's Office of Energy Independence, because I wanted to learn what my state is doing to address the fuel crisis. Our Governor, Jim Doyle, had recently issued an Executive Order directing state fleets to increase their use of renewable fuels, especially biodiesel and E85 ethanol. One of Redmond's jobs is to work with state fleet directors to make sure they are meeting the Governor's goals, both in terms of adding alternative fuel vehicles to the state's fleet and making sure that state employees are actually using alternative fuels in those vehicles. It's a big job, but I was very impressed by the way Redmond addressed...

  • Don't Judge a Book by its Cover
    By Mark O'Connell - Thursday July 17, 2008
    When you visit a dozen or more fleet maintenance shops in the course of the year as I do, you see all kinds of facilities. Some are bright, shiny and new, and some are dark, dingy and old. The same goes for the offices where the fleet maintenance managers hang their hats; some are neat, organized and expansive, and some are cramped and crowded and you can hardly find a place to sit down. But I have learned not to judge a book by its cover, because sometimes the most unimpressive-looking maintenance programs have the most impressive maintenance practices. Case in point: last week I visited a very affluent community to meet the supervisor of transportation for the local school district. The transportation facility was in one of the older...

  • Don't Blame Biofuels
    By Mark O'Connell - Wednesday July 9, 2008
    Timing is everything. Last week I was reading about a new report released by the World Bank that claimed that biofuel production has caused world food prices to increase by 75 percent. This week I read about a new report released by the US Departments of Energy and Agriculture that insists that "the expansion in ethanol and biodiesel consumption is estimated to have increased the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all food by 0.10-0.15 percentage point." How do we make sense of this disparity, and which numbers should we believe? I think you need to look at the sources of these two studies and consider their objectives. The World Bank provides economic and technical assistance to reduce poverty in developing countries. It has also been plagued...

  • Cutting Off Their Noses to Spite Their Faces
    By Mark O'Connell - Wednesday July 2, 2008
    The irony is so think you'd need the "jaws of life" to cut through it. On the same day that automakers reported their catastrophic sales slide for the month of June, the result of skyrocketing gasoline prices and inefficient product offerings, they also filed their objections to the government's new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, claiming that improving the fuel economy of the vehicles they manufacture would be disastrous to the auto industry, to consumers and to the nation's economy. Are they serious? Who writes their material? Don't they realize that their sales are nosediving precisely because Americans are rejecting low-mileage vehicles in the face of $4.00 a gallon gasoline? Remember a few months ago when a reporter...

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