Bridgestone Commercial Truck Tires

F L E E T V i e w

When you have a lot of trucks to maintain, and not many people to maintain them, it takes a strong person to keep the fleet afloat. At Diversified Trucking Corporation, the captain of the ship is Danny Salazar, a 22-year veteran who rolled up hundreds of thousands of miles as a driver before he became fleet manager.

Danny is hard-working and hard-nosed. At the same time, Danny is a marvelous team leader and a team player. He has assembled a group of 14 skilled technicians who work together to make Diversified’s fleet one of the best prepared for the road.

"The most important thing I’ve contributed to this company is the people I’ve hired," said Salazar.

Read the rest of the "Opinions of Salazar" in the following interview.

Does diversified trucking carry only dp Fitness products? "We used to. We are a part of RDM Sports Group, Inc., and prior to deregulation, their total line of exercise equipment, such as weights, benches and stationary bikes were the only loads we’d carry. But after the trucking industry was deregulated, we branched out. Now we carry lighting equipment, gas grills, sportswear—DP is only a small percentage of our business. "People like our service so much, in fact, they’re giving us more business than we can handle. It’s a problem. But it’s a nice problem."
Can you tell us the size of your fleet? "We’re running 106 tractors, and with 20 owner-operators plus leased trucks, and we have a total of 377 trailers." And what about the people who take care of that fleet? "Our people make the difference. I have fourteen people in service. And every one of them trains at the tire line. It doesn’t matter if they’re going to be file clerks, they have to learn the business. And tires are a big part of this business. We have hundreds of them on the ground, and you have to learn what they’re all about.
"Good people and training make a successful tire program. You have to send your people to seminars, and you’ve got to pay them while they’re gone. And when they come back, I always sit down and talk about the seminar and ask them what they learned and can share with the others. This way, they feel like they’ve accomplished something and are a part of this team."
How do the drivers fit into this team? "Our drivers are above average. And they have a lot of faith in us. We check their trucks out very thoroughly before they leave. Once they’ve done their pre-trip inspection, all they have to do is set their CB’s, turn on the air and drive off." Are you troubled with driver problems? "We’re really lucky. Our drivers stay with us, mainly because they get home often. Probably once a week. That’s the biggest factor. They have good equipment to drive and they make good money.

"A driver will leave you today over equipment. And that’s their option.

"Drivers are looking for larger cabs, because they spend so much time in them, and a powerful engine. We depend on our drivers a lot. So we give them what they want within reason.

"We ask them to run that truck 130,000 miles a year, so I’ll spend a few more bucks on them. If it costs me money, it’s O.K., because I’ve got a driver that feels better about what’s on the truck. There’s no way to calculate what an experienced driver can save you. And if they stay with us and operate a truck properly, then it’s worth a great deal to the company."

Are you saying you’re making concessions to drivers?

"Certainly. I make concessions to drivers they don’t even know about. Their safety weighs heavily on me. I’m not going to put a patch job out of this shop. I will not. When these trucks leave here, they leave in first class shape. We don’t patch anything. We fix it."

What kind of maintenance is performed on the fleet’s tractors?

"First of all, I specify these trucks—every engine, every transmission, every bulb, bearing and seal. Even the radio and the wire harness for the radio. For example, when it comes time to change the radio, we can do it in three minutes, because we know every part, every number, and we keep them in stock.

"In fact, we keep all of our parts stocked on shelves according to the age of our cabs. Right now, air conditioners are failing, so we have AC parts on the top shelf. When they’re out of season, air conditioner parts move to the bottom shelf, and other parts replace them on top."

Danny Salazar totally relies on his tire man, Jimmy Lockhart. Jimmy knows where every tire is in stock and on every truck; when to rotate them and when to replace them.

The service team at Diversified Trucking: to the left of Danny Salazar is Herbert Rowe, sales representative from Lynn Strickland Tire, a GCR Truck Tire Center.

What about tires?

"I like Bridgestone tires. And we have had great success with them. We had a team of drivers that ran 230,000 miles on a set of Bridgestone lug tires. And when they were ready to get a new truck, we asked them if they would let us transfer those same tires to their new truck.

"Now, the drivers weren’t too wild about getting used tires on their brand new unit, and we don’t intentionally try to set mileage records with tires. But I told the drivers that I wanted to keep the same drivers, and their same driving habits, pulling those tires on the same routes. And they said, O.K. So we put those Bridgestone M726s on their brand new truck, and they ran those tires to 394,000 miles."

Any more success stories like that?

"On steering tires, when they hit 100,000 miles, we start looking for an excuse to take them off. I don’t want to run those tires to 180,000 miles. I’ll take the tires off and put them on a trailer.

"Now, one time I was looking at a driver’s steer tires and said that I’d better change them before he hit 100,000 miles. He said ‘You mean 200,000 miles. You never changed them at 100,000.’ We actually overlooked changing his tires and he ran his steer tires to 197,000 miles—on Bridgestone R227s, which I think is the best steer tire out there."

What kind of maintenance do you do to get long mileage from your tires?

"To begin with, we use hub-piloted wheels, and have since 1989. They have a ten-year warranty, so you don’t have to worry about wheel damage.

"We use our own valve stems, our own valve cores and caps. If these come with the rim, they go into the garbage. That costs me a few extra dollars, but tires cost a lot of dollars.

"We mount the tire with lubricant, and we air it to the pound. Not ‘about,’ not ‘nearly,’ to the pound. And we give it a visual inspection to see that it’s mounted properly; then we balance it.

"We then put the tire on the truck and align it.

"Any time we put eight drive tires on a truck, we align that tractor all the way. If we’re only putting steering tires on, we look at our computer and see when it was aligned last.

"This is the only way you can get 100,000 miles from a steer tire. If you do not follow these procedures, you’re not going to get that kind of mileage. It takes hard work."

How important is proper air pressure?

"The tire is just an air container. If it doesn’t do that, it’s no good to anybody.

"Pressure is everything. It controls your wear rate, it controls the heat in the casing. So an important part of our service is that we air each tire to precisely the right pressure."

What are you doing differently that makes you successful?

"You can’t pinch pennies over here and watch the dollars fall of the table. You’ve got to watch the dollars and the pennies if you want to make good decisions.

"You have to have good people. And good training. And you have to pay your people well.

"I’ll take one good $15 tire man any day over three $5 tire men."

Thank you Danny, for real answers to our questions—and real performance from your team of dedicated service people.

End

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