Service trucks aim to offer maintenance technicians and engineers a workshop on wheels. Mounted on standard truck chassis, the lightweight truck bodies include numerous compartments for components and tools, designed to be accessed from outside of the truck. A deck on the rear of the truck can carry heavier components or additional equipment such as air compressors or lubrication systems. A straight boomed telescopic crane can lift heavy components up to several tonnes.
Why trucks, not vans?
Tim Davison has a unique perspective on the differing US and European approaches to service technicians’ vehicles. After working for five years at US service truck manufacturer Stellar, where he reached the position of product manager and was responsible for the development of the company’s service crane line, he took a job as regional sales manager with European knuckleboom manufacturer Palfinger in early 2001. He returned to Stellar five years later, and is now the company’s product manager for cranes and bodies.
He says, “The main advantage the service trucks have isn’t the tool storage, or the air compressor, or oil supply, but the crane and the space for a load on the back end. Being able to bring heavy parts like tyres and hydraulic cylinders to a job site, and fit them using a crane on the same vehicle, means you can complete repairs in half the time.
“In the US, we offer cranes with capacities anywhere from 2,000lb to 14,000lb [0.9-6.3t]. The higher capacity cranes give more reach, as well as being able to lift heavier loads out of the back end or from a trailer. They would be used, for example, on a mine site, where a cylinder might weigh 8,000lb, and may need to be fitted at a radius of 15ft away. You need a larger capacity crane to take that load out to that distance.
“A big advantage over knuckleboom cranes is that the winchline offers straight line pull. That means you can lift a load straight in and out, very accurately. The mechanic just needs to position the crane in the right place above the load, and can then raise or lower it in or out exactly. It’s a lot simpler than a knuckleboom.
“We use radio remote controls, but, again, they’re a lot simpler and work very well, compared to knucklebooms. We also aren’t required to have the same safety features, as we extend the load out to 9m at most, while knucklebooms may be used to take loads out above 30m.”
Tim Worman, product manager for commercial trucks at IMT, says, “In North America, what’s been recognised is the benefits of the ability to have the whole workshop on a truck. Service trucks don’t just carry an engineer’s tools, but the units also have air systems used to power pneumatic equipment, or cranes for lifting components that are being repaired.
“You’re saving up to two days of downtime by not having to move the equipment. The service engineer can arrive at a job site when the crew goes off shift, perform preventive maintenance, and have the equipment up and running when the crew start a new shift the next day.
“The more preventive maintenance you do, the longer the life the equipment has. As an example, it might cost $500 to service a hydraulic cylinder, but if you don’t do that work, and the cylinder fails, it can damage other equipment, causing $5,000 of damage.
“All of this equipment has certain maintenance schedules. Having a service truck lets you meet the schedule without taking equipment away from the site. Up until a few years ago, companies here saw service trucks as a cost centre; now, they see them as a revenue centre. They can tell end users that they will be able to keep equipment up and running, and provide service at the job site. End users are willing to pay more to have service done in the field.
“One thing that drives the market is available payload. We do a lot of work at the beginning of the design process to model the design to determine the stresses from the crane, and identify the structure needed. The balance is to have the proper structure yet maintain the greatest amount of payload available.
“As well as payload, customers want space for tool compartments. A big difference between a service truck and an engineers’ van is that with a service truck you’re working with your feet on the ground all the time, saving time getting in and out of the van.
“With the load bed, you want no less space than that needed to fit a pallet. Engineers will lift an engine or other component into the load bed with a forklift, take it to the site and fit it, and then take away the damaged part in the same way.
“The load bed’s also used for engine driven generators, for welders, for lighting and for air compressors.
“Additionally, when you’re performing servicing in the field, you often need lube capabilities. Equipment manufacturers nowadays have tight restrictions on contaminants in hydraulic systems. In the past, engineers would drain hydraulic fluid from a cylinder, perform repairs, and then top the hydraulics up with a bucket of oil and a funnel. With a service truck, you can use portable lube skids that prevent any contaminants getting into the equipment’s hydraulics.
“The crane on the service truck gives the engineer a lot of flexibility. It means you don’t need to move the equipment being serviced, but also that you can work without using a second piece of equipment for lifting. Service trucks can also be used for some elements of crane erection and servicing: for example, fitting cables on lattice boom cranes.”
Crossing the pond
Despite all of these advantages, the trucks have remained a peculiarly North American product. Stellar’s Davison explains that this is in part a consequence of how plant hire contracts are structured in the country: “The biggest thing in the US is the customers’ expectation of service, combined with the vast geographical area they’re working in. US customers want equipment serviced at the job site, not taken away to a workshop. They’ll get an uptime contract from their equipment supplier that will guarantee 95% availability. That will be backed with financial penalties if the guarantee isn’t met.
“The equipment supplier will demand that their own mechanics service and repair the vehicle; controlling that sort of regular preventative maintenance is the only way they can offer these guarantees.”
Worman agrees that uptime is key. “The typical customers for service trucks in North America are equipment dealers, who want to offer servicing to end users, and large contractors that want to service the equipment they have provided their customers.
“The large contractors want to be able to keep their equipment up and running. Being able to do servicing, maintenance and repair work in the field makes that quicker. As anyone in the equipment business will tell you, ‘If the equipment is not working in the dirt, it’s not making money.’”
One of the biggest obstacles to maintaining uptime in the US is geography. Worman says, “With the urban infrastructure in Europe, you’ve often got a lot of service centres available nearby, so it’s easier to take the equipment off site. Here in the US, the nearest service centre may be three hours away. This all affects the perception of the value proposition.”
Cultural differences also matter though. Worman explains, “The way the job is done is different too. In Europe, when you look at a field service technician’s job, his role is to get to the site quickly, perform diagnostics, and then decide whether the equipment can be serviced at the site, or if it needs to go back to the workshop. He often doesn’t perform the servicing himself, but moves on to the next job.” In the US, Worman says, the technician’s aim will generally be to make repairs or perform maintenance himself, rather than just making a diagnosis.
Despite these differences, both companies are looking to bring their products to Europe. And at ConExpo, a representative of a third manufacturer, Ramsey subsidiary AutoCrane, said that it too was considering exporting the concept out of America, starting with Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Stellar’s Davison is keeping his cards close to his chest: “I think within the next five-to-ten years, you’ll see a lot more service trucks in Europe. As the EU grows, people are going to expect to travel further to do business. That will mean people are less happy to have equipment going back to the shop, they’ll want to see it serviced on site.
“We’ve not got anything happening in Europe that we want to talk about yet, but we are in discussions with people there. We’re also seeing a lot of interest in Australia and sub-Saharan Africa.” Both of these regions are seeing rapid growth in the mining sector, and related infrastructure, so it’s possible that this will lead to demand for the trucks.
Worman, at IMT, is more forthcoming: “Right now, we’re not just developing a new product, but developing a new market at the same time. We’re looking at what countries we can work in.
“We’ve started small with a small mechanics truck, a small crane that lifts about 1,450kg, on a Sprinter chassis with a 5t gross vehicle weight over two axles. We’re focussing on Germany to start with. We were approached by Peter Simpson of Elite Truck Bodies, in Germany. He had worked in the US for twenty years, and seen how service trucks were used there. He’s working with van manufacturers, like Mercedes, to see how the service bodies can be fitted to their trucks.”
Elite Truck Bodies director Peter Simpson says, “This has been a four-year project. When I came back to Europe from America, I needed a service vehicle, and I didn’t want to use a panel van. I looked for something similar to an American style service truck in Europe, but there was nothing available.
“I set up Elite in Germany, so that we’d be close to the truck manufacturers, like Mercedes-Benz. I tried to work with three other service truck manufacturers from the United States, but they all failed to meet the legal, safety and quality standards required in Europe. I approached IMT about two years ago. We now have a fully certified product with IMT: the first production vehicles will be shown at IAA in Hanover later this year.
“We’re based next to the Mercedes Benz factory in Ludwigsfelde, and they have accepted us as a qualified partner for truck bodies. The truck bodies we’re using for the service truck have been designed specifically for the Mercedes Benz Sprinter and Vario chassis. We’ve received TÜV and DEKRA certification for the trucks. They’re fully approved and certified for use in Germany, which means they can effectively be used anywhere within the EU.”
Simpson continues, “I believe the market can be extended from the US. Firms like Caterpillar and Komatsu that manufacture in the US, or European companies like Liebherr with high sales in North America, are used to using service trucks in the US, and we hope they will want to use this technology in Europe.”
Worman is keen to build on established relationships too: “We’ve had a preferred supplier relationship with Caterpillar since 1996, so we want to build on that relationship. We hope other potential customers will see them using the trucks and think, ‘If it’s good enough for CAT, it is good enough for me’. It’s getting to a critical mass, where there’s the engineers who are used to using them that gets the product accepted.”
Simpson sees additional selling points for the trucks in Europe: “One of the ways we promote the concept on is safety. When you use a service truck, you’re working on the ground all the time, which is safer than climbing in and out of the back of a van. The unions in Germany are very powerful, and they’re very keen on safety issues like this. Another safety issue in Europe is lifting. The regulations here say you shouldn’t lift loads of more than 25kg on your own. Having the crane on the truck means you don’t need to do that.”
Simpson sees potential customers beyond Germany: “The accession [former Soviet bloc] countries is where EU funding is going, for infrastructure and construction work, so we see a market for service trucks there. They also still have a lot of mining. For that, you need bigger vehicles than the Sprinter and Vario.”
“We are working on heavier trucks also and will have a lubrication truck mounted on a Mercedes AXOR chassis at the IAA show in 2008. When you have to work with mining equipment where the tyres alone weigh up to 15t each, IMT already manufactures service equipment for this sort of equipment, and we are working on getting certification for it.” (For more, see CT Oct 2003, pp22-3).
Worman sees another potential source of demand in Europe: “We’ve seen that the articulated [knuckleboom] crane market in Europe is at capacity. We’re able to offer an alternative to customers who might otherwise use a truck with a loader crane mounted, and increase the supply in the market.”
If service trucks are ever to enter Europe, now looks like the time for it to happen. The technology transfer isn’t a one way street, however. Simpson explains, “As well as US service trucks coming to Europe, service trucks mounted on European chassis are doing well in the US. A service truck mounted on a Sprinter chassis will do 21-25mpg, while some service trucks mounted on US-manufactured chassis will only manage 7mpg. Now American businesses are having to think about fuel costs more, the European chassis are becoming very popular.”
