Beware Of The Details When Speccing Trucks

No matter the size of your fleet or the range of your operations, getting things right when it comes to speccing your trucks can be key to your company’s success.

Writing specifications that are unclear or missing important details can mean delays from manufacturers and vendors and unnecessary headaches for your employees and your customers.

Steve Weiser, a longtime fleet manager and procurement specialist who now oversees a utility fleet of 5,000 assets for Commonwealth Edison Company, better known as ComEd, says the best approaches to speccing trucks involve people across the spectrum at any business — not just the fleet manager or someone focused on procurement. For mobile mechanic operations, he said, that means getting input from the people who depend on the truck every day.

“I field a lot of questions from those mechanics, who don’t understand what was purchased and why it was purchased,” said Weiser, who gave at the Work Truck Show’s Green Truck Summit in Indianapolis this March a rundown of his top tips for speccing trucks to boost performance and efficiency. “As many of the stakeholders as you can get involved in the process, the better and smoother the process is going to go.”

Think about standardization

In his work with private companies and public agencies looking to save money and streamline their operations, Weiser has urged fleet managers to think about standardization. When thinking about specifications, he said that means sorting out a small number of configurations that could work well for different types of jobs, and different working conditions.

Scaling down variations on different vehicles is a matter of prioritizing needs over wants, Weiser said.

“Standardization should be about the truck, the chassis, the things you can pull together to allow you to purchase in volume to help your leverage your costs,” he said.

Equally important is making sure everyone involved in the spec’ing process is speaking the same language. One of Weiser’s favorite examples: just how many names people can have for the same type of vehicle. A single vehicle might be called a pie wagon, a bread truck, a pipe van, and a work van.

The industry standard for that type of vehicle: a step van.

“When you’re talking about vehicles, the best thing you can do is get your folks in your internal network to start using terms that are standard terms,” he said. “It makes your job easier because you have clear, concise language.”

Push terminology to the top

To get everyone within your organization on the same page, it’s important to “push up” those ideas, strategies or terminology to the top of the company, said Weiser, whose own company, a subsidiary of Exelon Corporation, provides electric service to about 3.8 million customers across northern Illinois.

“Once folks in management or executive roles understand those key concepts and use them, it trickles down relatively quickly,” he said.

Writing good specs is also dependent on having a strong network both inside your company and out. Internally, that means getting people up and down the supply chain involved in outlining the needs for a new vehicle, along with managers and the end users – drivers and mobile mechanics.

Outside the company, Weiser recommends improving communication with manufacturers, upfitters, end-point vendors or anyone else with a stake in the process. All of that networking could make a big difference down the road, if you need a quick response for a new order or a repair.

It’s also part of a thorough research process, which involves combing the manufacturers’ and upfitters’ websites for the information you need to write clear specifications.

When it’s time to put together a plan, companies should work in an Excel spreadsheet, Weiser advises. That way, people can put notes or suggestions in the margins, and new items can be easily added or deleted without disrupting the rest of the outline.

Make documents available

He said it’s also important to have an easily accessible document so there’s plenty of information on hand if important members of your team leave during the speccing process. Document when particular directions or orders were added, and who approved them.

“For some of these trucks, the turnover of the lead time can be eight to 12 months,” he said. “In that period you may have some key managers or executives leaving, and then the expectations change.”

Finally, when it’s time for the truck to be put together, track your vendor’s progress closely. Weiser suggests checking out the progress on the first vehicle being upfitted as part of larger order to head off any problems.

“Once they get the first one done, you can repeat that process,” he said.

Erin Golden is a writer based in Minnesota.