Mike Vorster, president, C.E.M.P. Central Inc.
“You can’t run the machines of today with the tools and technologies of yesterday.”— Mike Vorster, president, C.E.M.P. Central Inc.
The tier 4 engine is a drastically different beast than its predecessors. In order to achieve the emissions reductions mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency, the new engines require significantly more care and maintenance, particularly as it relates to fluids, says equipment management consultant Mike Vorster.
“You can’t run the machines of today with the tools and technologies of yesterday,” he says.
To deal with that complexity, a fleet operator should appoint a “fluids czar,” says Vorster, who is the president of C.E.M.P. Central Inc. — which stands for Construction Equipment Management Program Central.
Such a czar would be an employee who is singularly responsible for all fluids management for an entire fleet.
“I want to come up with another word, but czar is clear enough for now,” says Vorster, who has proposed the idea in a variety of forums, most recently at the ConExpo-Con/Agg heavy equipment trade show in Las Vegas this March. “Someone who is czar over all their assets related to fluids. We’re talking about fuel, oil, coolant, diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), and also air as a fluid. If you think about all those fluids and bundle them together, you’ve got a very interesting job description.”
Skillset of a chemist or nurse
Svc Truck2
Modern service trucks, such as this one displayed at ConExpo-Con/Agg in 2014, often carry a variety of fluids.
Vorster says the average operation will spend more money on those five fluids than they will on parts and labor. By bundling fluids responsibility together into one job title, it makes one person responsible for fluids dispensing, such as with service trucks and their operators. While it would be a very specialized job with a very specialized skillset, it does not necessarily require that the czar be a mechanic. The skillset would be much closer to that of a chemist or a nurse.
“The fluids have changed dramatically,” Vorster says. “The machines we own and operate have changed dramatically. We’ve now got all these after-treatment devices, we’ve got increased pressures and temperatures. The world has changed. Perhaps you need someone with the skillsets of a nurse or a well-trained naval chief petty officer rather than — what I see in many cases running the fuel trucks and fluid trucks — a mechanic who has kind of fallen behind the times.”
Beware of the last inches
One of the key benefits of the fluids czar would deal with what Vorster calls “the last few inches.” In explaining the concept, he uses the example of a recent viral video showing a delivery driver bringing a large flat-screen TV to a house. Upon receiving no answer at the door, he proceeds to toss the television over the fence around the yard, destroying it.
“That TV had come 5,000 miles from Korea, or wherever it was made, and it was within 10 feet of where it was supposed to be but it was thrown over the yard wall and broken,” Vorster says. “Well, your fuel or your oil or your coolant has come thousands of miles and has been rehandled many, many times until you put it in your service truck and finally put it in the machine. That’s where we really mess up our fuels — when we take them into the service truck and from the service truck into the machine.”
Vorster’s main point is that we cannot run the machines of today with the tools and technologies of yesterday. It pertains particularly not only to the fluids but to the service trucks that deliver them.
“A wrench is a wrench is a wrench, but I don’t think that a service truck is a service truck is a service truck anymore,” Vorster says. “A workshop, the only thing that’s changed in the last 30 years is the cleanliness thereof. A service bay is a service bay; the only thing that’s changed is the cleanliness. The principal technology that’s changed is the fluids technologies and how we manage and dispense them.”