Now that the entry deadline has passed for SuperTech2008, the national technician skills competition put on by the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC), the excitement surrounding the event is starting to build. In 12 days, about a hundred technicians from all across the country will gather at the TMC Fall Meeting in Nashville, TN, to show their stuff, and to compete for the title of SuperTech 2008.

This year’s event will be bigger and better than ever, with technicians competing in 14 different skill areas: Electrical/Electronics; Brakes; HVAC; Engines; Steering & Suspension; PMI; Drivetrain; Service Information; Tire & Wheel; Wheel End; Starting & Charging Systems; Work Order; Fasteners & Repairs; Safety & Environmental. The competition will kick off with a bang on Monday, Sept. 15, with a written test that will determine the competitors in the hands-on section, and then on Tuesday the real action begins on the competition floor. Believe me, it’s a sight worth seeing. Between the technicians’ single-minded focus on the troubleshooting challenges they’re facing and the volunteer judges’ experienced eyes watching over the proceedings, there’s just a whole lot of intensity in the room, and you know that the winners are going earn it.

If you can be in Nashville in two weeks to see the event, I encourage youi to do so. If you can’t, stay tuned to Fleet Maintenance magazine, as we’ll be reporting on the event in an upcoming issue. And start planning to send your best technicians next year!

My blog about Cummins’ flip-flop on using selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and urea in its 2010 heavy-duty diesels has spurred some interesting comments about urea, the mysterious blue liquid that will soon become as much a part of the heavy trucking industry as EGR and DPF have. A few of those concerns I can comment on here, but a few will have to remain open questions until we have some real-world experience with urea.

Going back to the conference call in which Cummins announced its new product plans, there were a lot of questions about urea, and a lot of tacit admissions that using urea in heavy trucks may not be a walk in the park. Back when Cummins had previously announced that it would only use an SCR/urea system in its medium-duty product, company executives explained that the system was well-suited to the medium-duty market because those vehicles traditionally returned to home base after completing their duty cycle, and therefore it would be easy for fleets to maintain urea levels in the trucks. Heavy-duty engines, not so much, according to Cummins execs.

Of course, with Cummins’ new plans that argument has gone up in a puff of smoke, so to speak, and so those same execs, two weeks ago, were suddenly being asked to address certain sticky questions about urea. One was about the rising cost of urea, which, one reporter claimed, could cost just as much as diesel fuel by the time 2010 rolls around. Cummins’ reply was that even if urea does cost that much, “there are cost benefits” in the form of a potential five percent improvement in fuel economy. Another question concerned the frequency with which urea tanks would need to be refilled, to which Cummins responded that a two- to three-week interval would be “typical” for a Class-8 truck. Ok, that may be a reasonable time frame, but if the urea refilling doesn’t sync with filling the fuel tanks, how many mistakes are going to be made?

Now, I want this urea system to work, because… well, because it has to. But there are a lot of questions, and, in truth, none of the answers that engine OEM execs have been coming up with are completely reassuring to me, and I doubt that they will be to most fleet maintenance managers. Do they reassure you?

Do you buy Cummins’ engines in your heavy-duty vehicles? Were you counting on avoiding the whole SCR/urea issue in 2010 buy spec’ing Cummins ISX engines with enhanced EGR? Hate to break it to you, but you’re going to have to rethink your plans.

Yesterday Cummins announced that it is changing its strategy for meeting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2010 diesel emissions requirements for lower NOx levels. The company had previously announced that it would meet the 2010 standards for its medium-duty engines using selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and urea, while its heavy-duty engines would rely solely on enhanced EGR and therefore avoid the use of SCR and liquid urea, which many consider cumbersome and inconvenient.

The beauty of Cummins’ original plan, of course, was that users would not have to refill a urea tank on their trucks, something the company was not shy about promoting. But yesterday that all changed. The company announced that, due to rising fuel prices and technological advances in the construction of SCR aftertreatment devices, it will now equip its 11.9 and 15 liter ISX engines for 2010 with SCR devices. That means that any truck with one of these engines will have to have a urea tank, and the drivers of those vehicles will have to fill those urea tanks regularly, or risk damaging their trucks and being in violation of the law.

What made the difference? Well, the Cummins folks explained that new materials being used to make SCR devices have made it possible to switch to this technology and actually save fuel. Seems that $4 a gallon really has been the tipping point…

Since every other engine maker is already planning to use SCR and urea, it simply means that Cummins is joining the crowd, and there’s no harm in that. Of course, you lose an option, and that’s never good. And, if you were planning your 2010 purchases based on Cummins’ previous plans, you might not be too happy about that.

Okay, quick quiz: What’s the difference between “Roll Stability Control” and “Electronic Stability Control?” Do you know the answer? Here’s a hint: Roll Stability Control (RSC) is sometimes referred to as “roll-only stability,” while Electronic Stability Control (ESC) is sometimes referred to as “full stability.”

Still stumped? Well, you’re not alone. It turns out a lot of fleet professionals have a hard time distinguishing between the two, which is why Bendix has recently published a white paper (available here within the week) called “Road Map for the Future: Making the Case for Full-Stability.” The new paper, as Bendix described to the media in a conference call this week, will help fleet managers understand how the systems differ, and why “full stability” ESC is the best choice for many fleets.

Why is this important? Two reasons. First, stability control systems are being touted as the most effective vehicle safety system since the seat belt; they can save lives, reduce property damage, and keep our highways safer for everyone. Second, the government may someday mandate them. To quote the white paper: “Regulators have already validated the impact stability systems can have on the safety of our nation’s highways. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has mandated ESP/ESC stability systems for passenger cars, light trucks, and SUVs. The regulation takes effect with the 2009 model year, and full compliance is required by the 2012 model year. Currently, NHTSA is considering additional regulation relative to stability technology for Class 6, 7, and 8 air-braked combination vehicles.” Need I say more?

You need to know about this technology, what it does, how it works, and what it can do for your fleet. Bendix’s white paper may not answer all your questions, but as a primer in stability control systems it’s hard to beat.

Oh, and the difference between RSC and ESC? Simply put, RSC detects directional changes in the vehicle, and takes corrective action if it calculates that a directional change will cause a rollover. ESC detects directional changes in the vehicle and compares them to driver input to determine if the vehicle is going in the direction the driver intends. If it’s not, ESC can intervene in vehicle control to a greater extent than RSC to prevent a rollover and keep the vehicle moving in the right direction. There’s more to it, of course. Want to know more? Read the paper.

The other day I visited Madison, our state capitol, to meet with Maria Redmond, the Biofuels Sector Specialist for the state’s Office of Energy Independence, because I wanted to learn what my state is doing to address the fuel crisis. Our Governor, Jim Doyle, had recently issued an Executive Order directing state fleets to increase their use of renewable fuels, especially biodiesel and E85 ethanol. One of Redmond’s jobs is to work with state fleet directors to make sure they are meeting the Governor’s goals, both in terms of adding alternative fuel vehicles to the state’s fleet and making sure that state employees are actually using alternative fuels in those vehicles. It’s a big job, but I was very impressed by the way Redmond addressed the challenge, by providing her fleet clients with all the tools and resources her budget would allow.

That night I had dinner with friends in Madison, and our hostess, Kristen, a state employee, mentioned in the course of conversation that she often uses a state car in her work. I asked her if she drove a flex-fuel vehicle, and she said yes. Then I asked her if she ever fills it up with E85 ethanol, and she said, “I don’t know where to find it.”

My eyes lit up. “I can help you with that,” I said, and I proceeded to tell her what Redmond and I had been discussing that afternoon. The next day I sent Kristen the link to the website Redmond has set up to help state fleets and drivers to locate E85 and biodiesel stations along their routes, and she is sold. She wrote back: “Thanks, Mark. I love the trip planner tool! I’ll definitely start mapping out all my work trips based on these station locations (it will help shave a big expense from my project budget).”

Now, obviously, the fact that Kristen’s bosses hadn’t communicated this to her points to problems with the state’s bureaucracy, but you would expect that. Redmond definitely has her work cut out for her, as her message is not reaching everyone it needs to reach, but it’s not due to any lack of effort on her part. In any case, just because of a chance comment over pizza, one more state employee is using the tools that Redmond has created; she is filling up with a renewable fuel, and she will tell her colleagues, and they will tell their colleagues, and it will grow and grow. Sometimes it’s really that easy to change the world.

When you visit a dozen or more fleet maintenance shops in the course of the year as I do, you see all kinds of facilities. Some are bright, shiny and new, and some are dark, dingy and old. The same goes for the offices where the fleet maintenance managers hang their hats; some are neat, organized and expansive, and some are cramped and crowded and you can hardly find a place to sit down. But I have learned not to judge a book by its cover, because sometimes the most unimpressive-looking maintenance programs have the most impressive maintenance practices.

Case in point: last week I visited a very affluent community to meet the supervisor of transportation for the local school district. The transportation facility was in one of the older sections of town, and when I pulled into the lot I was confused–I couldn’t find the offices. Off in the distance was a ramshackle maintenance garage where a number of yellow school buses were being worked on, but the office was hidden from view. I parked in front of a lopsided shack and decided to start my search by looking inside the shack.

To my surprise, the “shack” turned out to be the nerve center of the transportation program. The building, which seemed so small from outside, actually stretched back quite a ways, and housed several offices and a dispatch station. It was a beehive of activity, and when several friendly staffers directed me to the supervisor’s office, I found a comfortable work den and a couple of managers who are doing pretty amazing work with their fleet. My qualms about the exterior of the building faded away as we got into our conversation, but at one point the supervisor looked around the offices and jokingly explained that, obviously, his department was low on the list of funding priorities for the school district. But at that point it didn’t matter, because even though they may have been low on the totem pole, the people in that office building believed in the importance of what they were doing, and were resoved to get the job done, no matter what limitations they faced. And that’s a good message to send in this day and age.

Timing is everything. Last week I was reading about a new report released by the World Bank that claimed that biofuel production has caused world food prices to increase by 75 percent. This week I read about a new report released by the US Departments of Energy and Agriculture that insists that “the expansion in ethanol and biodiesel consumption is estimated to have increased the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all food by 0.10-0.15 percentage point.” How do we make sense of this disparity, and which numbers should we believe?

I think you need to look at the sources of these two studies and consider their objectives. The World Bank provides economic and technical assistance to reduce poverty in developing countries. It has also been plagued with corruption scandals throughout most of its history, the most recent one involving Bush crony Paul Wolfowicz giving his girlfriend a cushy job with the bank and being forced to resign as chairman. My guess? The World Bank’s study could easily have been influenced by players who want to keep biofuels from gaining any traction in the market.

How else do you explain the striking contradiction in the findings in the report from the US Dept’s of Energy and Agriculture? That study acknowledges that biofuel production does play a role in food prices, but goes on to say that other, global factors have a much greater impact on rising food prices. Those factors include worldwide droughts, population growth, the declining value of the dollar, and, ironically, high energy prices, which affect the cost of fertilizers and fuel for farming, and make it more expensive to get food to market.

I don’t claim to be an expert on any of this, but as a journalist I read a lot and I talk to a lot of people, and everything I hear from my sources lends weight to the findings of the US DOE/DOA study. Perhaps this study will settle the food vs. fuel debate, and we can move ahead with strategies that ensure both a steady, secure food supply and a healthy biofuel industry.

The irony is so think you’d need the “jaws of life” to cut through it. On the same day that automakers reported their catastrophic sales slide for the month of June, the result of skyrocketing gasoline prices and inefficient product offerings, they also filed their objections to the government’s new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, claiming that improving the fuel economy of the vehicles they manufacture would be disastrous to the auto industry, to consumers and to the nation’s economy.

Are they serious? Who writes their material? Don’t they realize that their sales are nosediving precisely because Americans are rejecting low-mileage vehicles in the face of $4.00 a gallon gasoline?

Remember a few months ago when a reporter asked President Bush if he was concerned about gasoline hitting $4 a gallon, and he replied, “Oh really? Four dollars a gallon? I hadn’t heard that.”? I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to be any more clueless than that, but here come GM, Ford, Chrysler and Toyota to prove me wrong. The automakers complain that the new CAFE standards will cost 82,000 jobs and $29 million in economic activity, and will reduce industry output by 850,000 units. Guess what, guys? It’s already happening, and it’s not because of CAFE standards. You’re losing customers, market share and stock value because you ramped up production of gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs and willfully ignored the nascent market for high-quality, high-mileage cars (not to mention the market for hybrids, flex-fuel vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles). How can you seriously look at what’s happening in the marketplace today and complain that being forced to sell high-mileage vehicles will kill your business? How can you say you didn’t see this coming?

In the course of updating our State Maintenance Council directory (available in our July issue, and online at www.fleetmag.com/council/), my Assistant Editor, Scott DeLaruelle, heard some comments that aroused some concern. Scott was calling State Trucking Associations to find out if they had their own State Maintenance Council, then if they did he was calling the Maintenance Council contact to get an update on the Council’s officers and contact information, and to ask if they ran a State Technician Competition for their members. Thirty-six states have Maintenance Councils, 14 don’t. Of the 36 that have Maintenance Councils, seven run competitions, and 29 don’t.

Out of those 29 states that don’t run technician competitions, a handful have very disturbing reasons for why they don’t.

One State Maintenance Council officer told Scott that he couldn’t get fleets in his state to support a technician competition because of their fears of technician theft–too many smaller fleets were worried that if they sent their top technicians to compete, those techs would be recruited away by bigger fleets at the competition.

Two other State Maintenance Council officers said that they can’t get support for a technician competition because of the cockiness factor–their member fleets worry that if a technician wins a state trophy, he or she will come back to the shop demanding more pay.

I have two reactions to this. First, are these really legitimate fears, or are they just excuses for not getting involved? Second, if they are true, so what? Why are these fleets unwilling to reward their technicians for their accomplishments? If a technician is good enough to go to a state competition and win, isn’t he worth paying more to hang on to? Why not tie a competition into a pay incentive for your best technicians? Imagine what kind of loyalty that would create, and imagine how envious those bigger fleets would be, knowing that they can’t steal a technician who is so happy in his current job…

And then there’s this: if your technicians win at a state competition, wouldn’t other technicians want to come work for you, because they’re so impressed with your training and incentive program?

It just seems to me that those fleet maintenance managers in those states are looking at things in absolutely the wrong way. And they probably don’t need the help of a state competition to lose their best employees.

The big news last week that Caterpillar plans to exit the on-highway diesel engine market as of 2010 probably didn’t come as a complete surprise to anyone in the trucking industry. Over the past several months, as other diesel engine manufacturers were loudly proclaiming their plans to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2010 emissions standards, Cat had been notably quiet. In fact, so little news has come out of Peoria in the past year that I had started to wonder if the company had shut down its public relations department.

In last week’s press release from the company, Cat’s Group President, Douglas R. Oberhelman, said, “Caterpillar and our dealers will continue to provide product support and service beyond 2010 for all Caterpillar on-highway engines regardless of truck brand.” That will, no doubt, be a relief to the countless fleets that depend on Cat power, but if I were in charge of purchasing for a fleet and I had 2008s or 2009s on order with Cat engines, I think I might feel a little betrayed and abandoned.

This isn’t the last we’ll see of Caterpillar, of course–the company also announced a strategic alliance with International Trucks, and plans to introduce its own line of severe-service trucks at the same time they leave the on-highway market. Just the same, Cat’s move will leave a big hole–and probably some hard feelings–in the industry.