Two Schools of Heavy-Equipment Maintenance: Buy the Service Agreement or Do It Yourself
Nov. 1, 2003
Heavy equipment has evolved in size and complexity, and so has the challenge of keeping it maintained, consistently and affordably. Manufacturers and dealers have responded to the task with a profusion of service agreements and long-term warranties; almost unknown a decade or two ago, they’re now critical to many dealers’ business strategies.But deals for servicing are rarely what you’d call, at first glance, a bargain. Labor will run you $65 an hour and up, fluids and filters typically will cost several hundred dollars more, and some customers think these expenses recur too often. If you have good operators or mechanics on the payroll, shouldn’t they be able to save you these costs by performing basic equipment servicing themselves?Besides, since heavy equipment is by far your most critical investment, you surely should develop an in-house knowledge base about it. You’re more or less compelled to understand your equipment by necessity, so why not do the service work yourself?Then again, the sheer profusion of new equipment types and their increasing sophistication seems to argue in favor of letting the dealership professionals keep it running for you. It’s an increasingly popular worry-free strategy. Outsourcing makes life easier, and it’s surprisingly cost-effective—say its adherents. In this two-part series we examine both sides of this debate: Should you buy the servicing plan—or do it yourself? To help you decide, we asked dealers and manufacturers to explain just what they offer; we also surveyed a variety of contractors for views and opinions about the results. In this first part we explore whether service deals are panning out as dealers promise and, if so, how you can get the most bang for your maintenance buck. In part two we’ll look at the alternative: whether and how you can continue doing high-quality, low-cost maintenance as part of your in-house operation.Not long ago, any self-respecting contractor would perform routine maintenance as a matter of course. His mechanic (or an operator, doubling as one) drained the old fluids and unpacked the new filters, casually inspecting the equipment for signs of wear. Then in the 1980s or so, along came dealer-designed service agreements, which initially received rather mixed reviews. One dealer whom we talked to recalled, candidly, that service agreements in that era “used to be considered a rip-off, so to speak,” and probably for good reason. Dealers and manufacturers still battle this perception but have made tremendous strides. Maintenance plans and options now have become progressively more attractive—giving greater flexibility, more customization choices, more professionalized work, and tangible end results. They’ve solved many, if not all, of the initial shortcomings and added new enticements. For example, such vendors as CNH, Caterpillar, and John Deere have worked to persuade dealers to offer standardized servicing packages, with the key goals being to offer high-value maintenance from coast to coast and one-stop servicing; that is, they’ll take care of any equipment brand, whether new or used.That said, the actual performance of these services still tends to be “only as good as the dealer himself.” It is highly dependent on the quality of dealership personnel and their level of service commitment. In our informal inquiry, we found dirt contractors who were very satisfied with the dealership service work and others who were much less so—even with maintaining similar equipment in the same market.Just What Do They Offer?
Whether it’s outsourced or done internally, the driving force of maintenance work probably derives from the following scenario: A skid-steer loader, a backhoe, or a dozer, for example, breaks down; often, other pieces are impacted too. Digging at the job site might even grind to a halt. Your equipment operators are now standing around taking extra-long cigarette breaks. And the general contractor or builder—who just happens to show up now—is most displeased with the scene.If it’s an engine failure, you also will have to wait for a trailer and must winch the machine precariously up the ramp for hauling to a repair shop. There, replacement parts might take days to arrive. Installation and testing will set you back another day or two. The work schedule falls behind even further. Cumulatively your cost impact from this one failure probably has climbed into the thousands, and inevitably you’ll be asking yourself, If I had spent the money and time to service this piece properly, would this have happened?Enter the extended warranty and/or service agreement. As Mike Enderle of Modesto Tractor, a central California dealer, notes, once an earthmoving contractor has experienced this kind of breakdown trauma, “it becomes much easier to persuade him to buy some sort of protective coverage.”Well-conceived plans combat the crisis scenario with a range of remedies. Not only do they ensure that your equipment has clean fluids and filters, but the latest and greatest programs provide things like recurring chemical measurement of fluid quality, which can (the dealers claim) serve as predictors of severe impending problems. In addition, you’ll benefit from the know-how of factory-trained dealer mechanics who have polished their skills by doing consistently thorough inspections day in and day out. Often they bring along predictive maintenance benchmarking tools, which, again, can assess impending parts failures. Their access to data about new part upgrades and alternatives, manufacturers’ service bulletins, an ongoing list of new things to check, and so on, are major elements of the service you’re buying. And these are tough for your own mechanics to match.Of course, breakdowns always happen, even to the best-maintained equipment. But having a service agreement in force seems to lessen the frequency and likelihood of “unexpected expensive ones,” says Enderle, who now manages servicing for about 300 pieces of equipment.
Whether it’s outsourced or done internally, the driving force of maintenance work probably derives from the following scenario: A skid-steer loader, a backhoe, or a dozer, for example, breaks down; often, other pieces are impacted too. Digging at the job site might even grind to a halt. Your equipment operators are now standing around taking extra-long cigarette breaks. And the general contractor or builder—who just happens to show up now—is most displeased with the scene.If it’s an engine failure, you also will have to wait for a trailer and must winch the machine precariously up the ramp for hauling to a repair shop. There, replacement parts might take days to arrive. Installation and testing will set you back another day or two. The work schedule falls behind even further. Cumulatively your cost impact from this one failure probably has climbed into the thousands, and inevitably you’ll be asking yourself, If I had spent the money and time to service this piece properly, would this have happened?Enter the extended warranty and/or service agreement. As Mike Enderle of Modesto Tractor, a central California dealer, notes, once an earthmoving contractor has experienced this kind of breakdown trauma, “it becomes much easier to persuade him to buy some sort of protective coverage.”Well-conceived plans combat the crisis scenario with a range of remedies. Not only do they ensure that your equipment has clean fluids and filters, but the latest and greatest programs provide things like recurring chemical measurement of fluid quality, which can (the dealers claim) serve as predictors of severe impending problems. In addition, you’ll benefit from the know-how of factory-trained dealer mechanics who have polished their skills by doing consistently thorough inspections day in and day out. Often they bring along predictive maintenance benchmarking tools, which, again, can assess impending parts failures. Their access to data about new part upgrades and alternatives, manufacturers’ service bulletins, an ongoing list of new things to check, and so on, are major elements of the service you’re buying. And these are tough for your own mechanics to match.Of course, breakdowns always happen, even to the best-maintained equipment. But having a service agreement in force seems to lessen the frequency and likelihood of “unexpected expensive ones,” says Enderle, who now manages servicing for about 300 pieces of equipment.
Still More in the Mechanic’s Tool Chest
Besides all this—as the outsourcing argument continues—there’s much more to today’s maintenance package than you might realize, notes John Strangberg, services marketing manager for Case Construction Equipment (part of CNH) in Racine, WI. When the mechanic arrives for the incremental fluid change, he relates, there’s usually a 30- or 40-point checklist he brings along, which often has been customized for the particular equipment, at least in the CNH service program. He’ll look for loose belt tensioners, leaky coolant lines, or electronic controller chip malfunctions (“Mechanics can read the codes stored in onboard diagnostics—which owners usually can’t or don’t,” Strangberg points out); worn pins, bushings, or bucket teeth due for replacement; and so on. By contrast, when your own operator/mechanic performs the preignition walk-around, he’s typically in a hurry to get the machine going on the day’s production goals. Instead of noting and correcting problems at once, says Strangberg, “he’ll wait until the boom wiggles a foot each way” before taking it out of service. By then, instead of requiring a $300 pin and bushing replacement, you are looking at an $1,800 casting.Of course, you’re also paying for the added peace of mind gained by this dealership expertise. Typically you’re shelling out relatively high hourly labor costs (ranging from $62 to $85, in our small sample) plus travel time—and the dealer contributes his own profits too. Advocates of outsourcing answer this by pointing out that, in fact, your costs for fluids, filters, parts, and often labor are going to be fairly comparable either way. And several manufacturers now will help with financing your entire maintenance package at low interest, especially when purchased as part of a new-equipment deal. Dealers also will tell you that your outlay for servicing will be recouped in a significantly extended equipment life span and by the higher resale value you’ll get. One North Carolina construction executive, who has done servicing both in-house and with outside help, points out, “Doing your own oil changes will mean, number one, that you have to have your own $60,000 service truck. And you will have to put a man on the payroll who knows what he’s doing. To get that here in our market, you’re probably going to spend $35,000 to $40,000 a year. So from economic standpoint alone, it usually doesn’t make sense to get into the maintenance servicing business.”He adds, “If you’re a roads-and-bridge contractor who shifts equipment long distances, it makes even more sense to outsource.” Large dealership networks, such as Caterpillar’s, now are honoring servicing agreements reciprocally so that your service needs can be provided wherever the vehicle travels. Doing this long-distance service work yourself means you’ll incur the potential liability for your trucks’ oil or fuel spills on the highway—not to mention paying mechanics for their road time.“It’s Worth the Money—Sort Of”
It’s tough to generalize about whether every service agreement will pan out because dealers and local market conditions vary. Opinions also vary according to whom you happen to ask. We took a quick survey of nearly a half-dozen contractors and found an interesting range of experiences. Here are some typical ones:Ken Porter, a contractor in North Fork, NE, owns twin-engine Cat scrapers, Cat and Komatsu excavators and dozers, graders, and various dump trucks. Concerning service deals, he does buy them and considers them “good insurance policies.” He adds, however, that it’s always a gamble as to whether the cost of the perceived “protection” is justified. He is not entirely convinced.
As for extended warranties, Porter buys them too, albeit reluctantly, but thinks that manufacturers should offer longer, more comprehensive coverage for free. Instead of “tacking on a couple thousand dollars more to a machine cost, just do the warranty service,” he says.How about the quality of scheduled maintenance service provided by his Cat dealer? Porter remarks that he is fairly happy with it. “We felt [the agreements] were worth the money.” He also observes, “It seems like if you’ve purchased an agreement, it may be easier to get what I would call ‘warranty work’ done than it otherwise would.” Once, he recalls, a potentially costly repair on a Cat 330 excavator was fully covered. He was glad he’d bought the agreement but wondered if the dealer would have honored it if he hadn’t. Other contractors expressed similar views to us.In any case, the right time to purchase an agreement or an extended warranty, Porter believes, is when you buy equipment new, rather than when the manufacturer’s warranty is almost expired. “If you put the [extended service warranty] right on there so that you’ll have it, the machine is good for five years, worry-free.”Leo Reiken of Reiken Construction Inc. in Henderson, IA, expresses a more jaundiced opinion. “[Dealers] just come out with these panic letters about how my final drives are contaminated,” he relates, and they expect him to buy a maintenance deal for his John Deere scraper, skid loader, track hoes, excavators, and three Cat 977L track loaders. He points out that final drives on Cats lack a filtering system anyway, “so they’re always going to have a little bit of dirt and stuff in them, even if you change them every week.” And this “normal” dirt isn’t sufficient to warrant buying a maintenance commitment. Reiken, who is 60 years old, points out that he has been moving dirt (and maintaining all equipment himself, satisfactorily, along with employees’ help) since his youth.Bob Taylor, equipment manager at McLeod Land Services in Sarasota, FL, oversees 100-plus heavy-equipment pieces and buys new ones quite frequently. In recent years he’s noticed a big push by dealers for extended warranties and service agreements. It’s a buyer’s market—and he’s a major buyer. So a short time ago he persuaded dealers to give him their longer, more comprehensive warranties, worth $5,000 apiece, for free.Taylor recently bought some Kobelcos and Kawasakis, which still are under the original equipment manufacturer warranties and haven’t broken down (save for a hose). He rates the quality of scheduled maintenance service and assorted fine-tuning by his dealer (Great Southern Equipment Company based in Jackson, MS) as “excellent.”Bill Cornett, vice president of Showalter Construction Company in Charlotte, NC, has used Cat’s Customer Support Agreement for scheduled maintenance on all of his two-dozen–plus earthmoving pieces since the plan first was introduced to him in the mid-1990s. All in all, he says, dealer performance has been outstanding. He’s a thoroughly satisfied customer.Cornett finds that one of the biggest benefits is that the dealer will dispatch his mechanics for equipment servicing during off-hours, including weekends or after- or before-work time. Thus, rarely is equipment ever taken out of action for routine maintenance. This alone makes outsourcing extremely valuable. In contrast, Cornett recalls an experience with his previous employer—a large regional grading contractor—that did its own preventative maintenance (PM) and repair work. These items constantly were going by the wayside, Cornett recalls, due to production priorities. When Cornett moved to Showalter Construction some years ago, he already was convinced that outsourcing was worth the cost, both to ensure that PM does get done and to avoid interrupting productive time.A second key benefit has proven to be the checklist of to-do items given to him by the mechanics after each PM. “[This consists of] things needing repair or corrective attention, like broken exhaust pipes or smokestacks and leaky hydraulic cylinders,” he says. The dealer, Carolina Tractor, sends him the same two mechanics month after month. “They’ve gotten to know the equipment very well,” Cornett adds. “They provide us with another set of eyes to see equipment problems that our troops may see every day but just get used to seeing and do not report.”The dealer’s mechanics also give Cornett oil sampling reports on each machine. By analyzing contaminant levels over time and consulting with Carolina Tractor, he will sometimes determine that it’s wise to order a prefailure engine replacement (i.e., a brand-new engine) even before the old one crashes. Other managers might think he’s going too far, but—given that replacements probably are inevitable—Cornett thinks it’s better to do them on his own terms and timing.He also believes (like Porter) that buying a service agreement probably avoids disputes that otherwise would arise over out-of-warranty breakdowns. On three separate occasions, he recalls, Cat and Carolina Tractor have provided him with new engines or other major replacement parts gratis, even months after the warranty had lapsed. (He did pay for the labor.) “Caterpillar,” says Cornett, “has given us what you might call an additional consideration by our having our equipment on a customer service agreement.” This—along with his dealer’s willingness to do servicing off-hours—are two very big plusses.For these benefits Cat charges Showalter Construction a fixed cost that ranges from $550 to $650 per visit, depending on the equipment being serviced. This works out to roughly $2–$3 per hour of equipment use, which is at the high end of a reported industry norm. To simplify the accounts, this flat fee covers all servicing types, whether for a 250-, 500-, 1,000-, or 2,000-hour increment. If the servicing must take place outside a limited zone around Charlotte, a modest travel surcharge applies.How does Showalter log the equipment hours efficiently and report the cumulative time? This is a perennial problem for all scheduled equipment maintenance. To solve it, Showalter’s dealer provides Cornett with a spreadsheet listing the equipment make, model, serial number, equipment ID number, date of last servicing, previous hour-meter reading, and latest hour-meter reading. Showalter’s site foremen collect operating data weekly or monthly. Completed sheets then are faxed to Carolina Tractor’s service department, and every 250 operating hours or so, they’ll call to ask what time would be convenient for a visit and where to hook up with the equipment.In summing up their case for PM outsourcing, devotees also would tell you about a few of the perceived disadvantages of the do-it-yourself route. At the top of the list, there’s the burden of hiring and training competent personnel, obtaining and internalizing the knowledge affordably, retaining what you’ve learned, and how and where to get refresher courses and bulletins. Paradoxically, manufacturers seem surprisingly helpful to owners in supplying helpful materials, considering that they really want you to buy the dealer’s servicing. They’ll provide you with manuals, bulletins, and various resources and even access to classroom sessions by request.In any event, many contractors who might have started out with the best intentions of doing their own maintenance simply discover, once they’re into it, that they’re too short-handed, too busy, or lacking in know-how to keep up with the profusion of technical data. Nor do they know precisely what resources are available or where to get them. Nor—given all the costs and inconveniences—are they confident that the in-house strategy has saved them money after all. As Cornett observes, “With labor shortages of qualified people, we need to train people to make money for us rather than train them to perform maintenance.”Then there are additional issues, such as worker safety; increased liability; the cost and upkeep of tools; environmental disposal fees; space for equipment, oil, and servicing trucks (and their upkeep); shop utilities; and insurance. For a growing number of equipment owners, the bottom line seems to point to signing on the dotted line—that is, taking the “buy-it-and-forget-it” strategy through outsourcing. In the universe of small-business headaches, “This option will give you one less thing to worry about,” as one buyer put it.Of course there’s another side to the story. In the next part of this series, we’ll examine ways of doing high-quality, low-cost, in-house maintenance and servicing while saving money on repairs.
Besides all this—as the outsourcing argument continues—there’s much more to today’s maintenance package than you might realize, notes John Strangberg, services marketing manager for Case Construction Equipment (part of CNH) in Racine, WI. When the mechanic arrives for the incremental fluid change, he relates, there’s usually a 30- or 40-point checklist he brings along, which often has been customized for the particular equipment, at least in the CNH service program. He’ll look for loose belt tensioners, leaky coolant lines, or electronic controller chip malfunctions (“Mechanics can read the codes stored in onboard diagnostics—which owners usually can’t or don’t,” Strangberg points out); worn pins, bushings, or bucket teeth due for replacement; and so on. By contrast, when your own operator/mechanic performs the preignition walk-around, he’s typically in a hurry to get the machine going on the day’s production goals. Instead of noting and correcting problems at once, says Strangberg, “he’ll wait until the boom wiggles a foot each way” before taking it out of service. By then, instead of requiring a $300 pin and bushing replacement, you are looking at an $1,800 casting.Of course, you’re also paying for the added peace of mind gained by this dealership expertise. Typically you’re shelling out relatively high hourly labor costs (ranging from $62 to $85, in our small sample) plus travel time—and the dealer contributes his own profits too. Advocates of outsourcing answer this by pointing out that, in fact, your costs for fluids, filters, parts, and often labor are going to be fairly comparable either way. And several manufacturers now will help with financing your entire maintenance package at low interest, especially when purchased as part of a new-equipment deal. Dealers also will tell you that your outlay for servicing will be recouped in a significantly extended equipment life span and by the higher resale value you’ll get. One North Carolina construction executive, who has done servicing both in-house and with outside help, points out, “Doing your own oil changes will mean, number one, that you have to have your own $60,000 service truck. And you will have to put a man on the payroll who knows what he’s doing. To get that here in our market, you’re probably going to spend $35,000 to $40,000 a year. So from economic standpoint alone, it usually doesn’t make sense to get into the maintenance servicing business.”He adds, “If you’re a roads-and-bridge contractor who shifts equipment long distances, it makes even more sense to outsource.” Large dealership networks, such as Caterpillar’s, now are honoring servicing agreements reciprocally so that your service needs can be provided wherever the vehicle travels. Doing this long-distance service work yourself means you’ll incur the potential liability for your trucks’ oil or fuel spills on the highway—not to mention paying mechanics for their road time.“It’s Worth the Money—Sort Of”
It’s tough to generalize about whether every service agreement will pan out because dealers and local market conditions vary. Opinions also vary according to whom you happen to ask. We took a quick survey of nearly a half-dozen contractors and found an interesting range of experiences. Here are some typical ones:Ken Porter, a contractor in North Fork, NE, owns twin-engine Cat scrapers, Cat and Komatsu excavators and dozers, graders, and various dump trucks. Concerning service deals, he does buy them and considers them “good insurance policies.” He adds, however, that it’s always a gamble as to whether the cost of the perceived “protection” is justified. He is not entirely convinced.
As for extended warranties, Porter buys them too, albeit reluctantly, but thinks that manufacturers should offer longer, more comprehensive coverage for free. Instead of “tacking on a couple thousand dollars more to a machine cost, just do the warranty service,” he says.How about the quality of scheduled maintenance service provided by his Cat dealer? Porter remarks that he is fairly happy with it. “We felt [the agreements] were worth the money.” He also observes, “It seems like if you’ve purchased an agreement, it may be easier to get what I would call ‘warranty work’ done than it otherwise would.” Once, he recalls, a potentially costly repair on a Cat 330 excavator was fully covered. He was glad he’d bought the agreement but wondered if the dealer would have honored it if he hadn’t. Other contractors expressed similar views to us.In any case, the right time to purchase an agreement or an extended warranty, Porter believes, is when you buy equipment new, rather than when the manufacturer’s warranty is almost expired. “If you put the [extended service warranty] right on there so that you’ll have it, the machine is good for five years, worry-free.”Leo Reiken of Reiken Construction Inc. in Henderson, IA, expresses a more jaundiced opinion. “[Dealers] just come out with these panic letters about how my final drives are contaminated,” he relates, and they expect him to buy a maintenance deal for his John Deere scraper, skid loader, track hoes, excavators, and three Cat 977L track loaders. He points out that final drives on Cats lack a filtering system anyway, “so they’re always going to have a little bit of dirt and stuff in them, even if you change them every week.” And this “normal” dirt isn’t sufficient to warrant buying a maintenance commitment. Reiken, who is 60 years old, points out that he has been moving dirt (and maintaining all equipment himself, satisfactorily, along with employees’ help) since his youth.Bob Taylor, equipment manager at McLeod Land Services in Sarasota, FL, oversees 100-plus heavy-equipment pieces and buys new ones quite frequently. In recent years he’s noticed a big push by dealers for extended warranties and service agreements. It’s a buyer’s market—and he’s a major buyer. So a short time ago he persuaded dealers to give him their longer, more comprehensive warranties, worth $5,000 apiece, for free.Taylor recently bought some Kobelcos and Kawasakis, which still are under the original equipment manufacturer warranties and haven’t broken down (save for a hose). He rates the quality of scheduled maintenance service and assorted fine-tuning by his dealer (Great Southern Equipment Company based in Jackson, MS) as “excellent.”Bill Cornett, vice president of Showalter Construction Company in Charlotte, NC, has used Cat’s Customer Support Agreement for scheduled maintenance on all of his two-dozen–plus earthmoving pieces since the plan first was introduced to him in the mid-1990s. All in all, he says, dealer performance has been outstanding. He’s a thoroughly satisfied customer.Cornett finds that one of the biggest benefits is that the dealer will dispatch his mechanics for equipment servicing during off-hours, including weekends or after- or before-work time. Thus, rarely is equipment ever taken out of action for routine maintenance. This alone makes outsourcing extremely valuable. In contrast, Cornett recalls an experience with his previous employer—a large regional grading contractor—that did its own preventative maintenance (PM) and repair work. These items constantly were going by the wayside, Cornett recalls, due to production priorities. When Cornett moved to Showalter Construction some years ago, he already was convinced that outsourcing was worth the cost, both to ensure that PM does get done and to avoid interrupting productive time.A second key benefit has proven to be the checklist of to-do items given to him by the mechanics after each PM. “[This consists of] things needing repair or corrective attention, like broken exhaust pipes or smokestacks and leaky hydraulic cylinders,” he says. The dealer, Carolina Tractor, sends him the same two mechanics month after month. “They’ve gotten to know the equipment very well,” Cornett adds. “They provide us with another set of eyes to see equipment problems that our troops may see every day but just get used to seeing and do not report.”The dealer’s mechanics also give Cornett oil sampling reports on each machine. By analyzing contaminant levels over time and consulting with Carolina Tractor, he will sometimes determine that it’s wise to order a prefailure engine replacement (i.e., a brand-new engine) even before the old one crashes. Other managers might think he’s going too far, but—given that replacements probably are inevitable—Cornett thinks it’s better to do them on his own terms and timing.He also believes (like Porter) that buying a service agreement probably avoids disputes that otherwise would arise over out-of-warranty breakdowns. On three separate occasions, he recalls, Cat and Carolina Tractor have provided him with new engines or other major replacement parts gratis, even months after the warranty had lapsed. (He did pay for the labor.) “Caterpillar,” says Cornett, “has given us what you might call an additional consideration by our having our equipment on a customer service agreement.” This—along with his dealer’s willingness to do servicing off-hours—are two very big plusses.For these benefits Cat charges Showalter Construction a fixed cost that ranges from $550 to $650 per visit, depending on the equipment being serviced. This works out to roughly $2–$3 per hour of equipment use, which is at the high end of a reported industry norm. To simplify the accounts, this flat fee covers all servicing types, whether for a 250-, 500-, 1,000-, or 2,000-hour increment. If the servicing must take place outside a limited zone around Charlotte, a modest travel surcharge applies.How does Showalter log the equipment hours efficiently and report the cumulative time? This is a perennial problem for all scheduled equipment maintenance. To solve it, Showalter’s dealer provides Cornett with a spreadsheet listing the equipment make, model, serial number, equipment ID number, date of last servicing, previous hour-meter reading, and latest hour-meter reading. Showalter’s site foremen collect operating data weekly or monthly. Completed sheets then are faxed to Carolina Tractor’s service department, and every 250 operating hours or so, they’ll call to ask what time would be convenient for a visit and where to hook up with the equipment.In summing up their case for PM outsourcing, devotees also would tell you about a few of the perceived disadvantages of the do-it-yourself route. At the top of the list, there’s the burden of hiring and training competent personnel, obtaining and internalizing the knowledge affordably, retaining what you’ve learned, and how and where to get refresher courses and bulletins. Paradoxically, manufacturers seem surprisingly helpful to owners in supplying helpful materials, considering that they really want you to buy the dealer’s servicing. They’ll provide you with manuals, bulletins, and various resources and even access to classroom sessions by request.In any event, many contractors who might have started out with the best intentions of doing their own maintenance simply discover, once they’re into it, that they’re too short-handed, too busy, or lacking in know-how to keep up with the profusion of technical data. Nor do they know precisely what resources are available or where to get them. Nor—given all the costs and inconveniences—are they confident that the in-house strategy has saved them money after all. As Cornett observes, “With labor shortages of qualified people, we need to train people to make money for us rather than train them to perform maintenance.”Then there are additional issues, such as worker safety; increased liability; the cost and upkeep of tools; environmental disposal fees; space for equipment, oil, and servicing trucks (and their upkeep); shop utilities; and insurance. For a growing number of equipment owners, the bottom line seems to point to signing on the dotted line—that is, taking the “buy-it-and-forget-it” strategy through outsourcing. In the universe of small-business headaches, “This option will give you one less thing to worry about,” as one buyer put it.Of course there’s another side to the story. In the next part of this series, we’ll examine ways of doing high-quality, low-cost, in-house maintenance and servicing while saving money on repairs.
