By now, you should know what SCR and DEF stand for, but if you don’t I’ll recap: SCR stands for Selective Catalytic Reduction, the technology that most of the major diesel engine manufacturers have chosen to meet the EPA’s 2010 diesel engine emissions standards, and DEF stands for Diesel Exhaust Fluid, the urea solution that is injected into the aftertreatment system of a truck with an SCR engine.

Last week at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, KY, you could hardly go five minutes without someone talking about SCR and DEF, and the conflict that has erupted between the OE’s that will be using SCR and DEF in 2010 (Daimler, PACCAR, Cummins, Volvo and Mack) and those that will be using “enhanced EGR” (Navistar/International).

The conflict over which system is best is not a simple one, and many of the claims and counter-claims made by the manufacturers can’t be validated until 2010 trucks and engines are on the road a year from now. But, as I sat through nearly 20 hours of “EPA 2010″ presentations in Louisville last week, it occurred to me that there is one issue that we can lay to rest right here and right now. The folks at Navistar/International have been getting a lot of mileage out of their claim that DEF, a solution of urea and water that truck drivers will have to fill regularly on their trucks, is a “possibly volatile” substance. Quite naturally, the other manufacturers take issue with this, insisting that DEF is about as hazardous as Windex…

Of course we all know there’s one way to find out if a substance is dangerous: you check its Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS). So today I went online to the website of Terra Industries, a DEF supplier that was represented on one of last week’s DEF panels, and I looked up the MSDS for DEF. You can see it for yourself here. Turns out, both sides can make their points: yes, DEF can emit toxic ammonia vapors when and if it degrades, but–realistically–the biggest risk posed by a DEF spill in your shop is that the floor will be slippery.

If you are considering purchasing new trucks with 2010 engines, it’s worth your while to read the MSDS for DEF. Like all chemicals, DEF should be handled with care, but the MSDS makes it quite clear that DEF is NOT a hazardous substance. Score one for the SCR guys.

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Publicity matters when you’re launching a first-ever competition. Not everyone will have the luxury of partnering with a national magazine like Fleet Maintenance when planning a competition, so in that regard, I wanted to touch on several things we’ve done in Nebraska that are tools anyone can implement.

One of the easiest things you can do is talk about SuperTech, which is completely free. It’s really that easy: you talk about SuperTech. You talk to fleets, you talk to dealers and you talk to potential sponsors. You ask them if they’ve heard about SuperTech. If they have, you ask them what they think. If they haven’t, you give them an introduction to the competition.

Another easy thing to do is get different groups of people involved. Community colleges may not be the first thing you think of when you think about SuperTech, but for those of us in Nebraska, it was a natural fit. We’re partnering with the colleges to help proctor our exams. Think outside of the box and get different groups of people involved.

And finally, create a flyer that can serve as a talking piece. Post it on a Web site. Include information about your event. Keep it in your briefcase and take it to every meeting you go to.

None of these ideas are monumental, but they are simply a few of the things we’ve been doing in Nebraska to help us stay publicized.

I don’t normally talk about products here in my blog, but an interesting situation came up the other day. A gentleman contacted me to talk about a vehicle maintenance product that he invented several years ago. He was having trouble getting attention for his product, and wanted some advice on how to reach the fleet maintenance market.

What surprised me about this man’s story is that his product addresses an age-old vehicle maintenance problem that has, I’m sure, cost the fleet industry a great deal of money over the decades. He told me has tried to sell it through mobile tool distributors with no luck. “With a production capability of nearly 30,000 tools per month, two manufacturer part numbers, acceptance world-wide by thousands of techs, and a voltmeter-based diagnostic system that works with the engine manufacturers’ and OEMs’ diagnostic systems, you’d think (we) were right there,” the inventor says in a document he sent along to me. “But, (we)’re not.”

The question is, why not? Assuming for the sake of argument that the gentleman’s tool is everything it’s cracked up to be, why would the fleet maintenance industry turn a blind eye to it?

Have you or your technicians ever run across a tool so clever and well-designed that you wondered why it wasn’t in every service bay from coast to coast? What makes a tool something you can’t live without? If there was a tool out there that could save you money and time and your normal distributors weren’t touching it, wouldn’t you want to know why?

It’s getting ugly. That’s the only way to describe the “debate” over the differing technology paths chosen by diesel engine manufacturers to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2010 diesel emissions standards for the reduction of NOx to 0.20 g/hp-hr. As things stand today, there will be two competing technologies offered by engine makers next year, but the battle for supremacy has already reached a fever pitch.

Without going into which manufacturer is offering which technology (by now pretty much everyone in the trucking industry is aware of the players and their strategies), I will say that never before, in 8+ years of working in this industry, have I been as beseiged with information, opinion and spin as I have been regarding the 2010 engine issue over the past few months. And it’s ugly. The ugliness has reached a point where several engine manufacturers are hastily organizing a press event next week at the Mid-America Truck Show in Louisville, to defend their technology choices and debunk what they regard as misinformation being presented by the “other side.”

I personally don’t know which technology will be “better.” Each has its own unique pros and cons, and each fleet will have to decide how much inconvenience–and perhaps risk–it is willing to take when deciding on a diesel engine supplier from 2010 on. It should be an interesting process.

Where do you stand? Have you been studying up on your choices for 2010? Have you made a decision on which technology and which manufacturer you’ll throw in with? We’d love to know what you’ve chosen, and why.

One of the great successes we’ve had throughout the state of Nebraska is the willingness of many different people to get involved with SuperTech on many different levels. This week, I wanted to touch on what Nebraska fleets and dealers are doing to get involved. Several companies have already started the process to get an internal company competition started. I believe a few of them will have a competition running by next year.

This year, Omaha Truck Center, the dealership group I work for, will be hosting its first ever UltimateTech competition in mid-April. I recently had the pleasure of traveling to all of our dealership locations to talk about SuperTech, and about our desire to start our own company competition. With the help of our service managers, I am pleased to report that OTC will have over 100 people competing in its inaugural UltimateTech event. My goal of getting 50 technicians was far surpassed, as soon as the technicians realized what a great event UltimateTech is going to be. We plan to send some of our top performers to the state SuperTech competition.

I believe this model is the way to go as more states begin to have competitions. Why not encourage local fleets and dealers to have internal competitions and send the “best of the best” to the state competition? This makes winning at the state level that much more exciting.

Try bringing up having a SuperTech competition within your fleet or dealership and see what kind of response you get. If it’s anything like what’s happened in Nebraska, you may soon find yourself planning your own competition!

It’s nice to have something good to report every now and then, and today’s news is pretty hard to beat. The National Truck Equipment Association (NTEA) has seen very positive turnout for their Annual Meeting and Work Truck Show, being held this week in Chicago. On the first day of the show, NTEA’s Meeting and Member Services Director, Steve Carey, was awfully happy with the crowds. According to Steve, registrations are up over 1,500 over last year’s show, and as of the first day, approximately 6,000 attendees had already checked in.

These aren’t the official numbers, but the point is that a lot of people see the value in attending an industry event. And, based on the seminars I attended, the people who have made the investment to attend the Work Truck Show are going to return home to their offices much richer for it. Richer in information and richer in smarts, that is…

Good show, NTEA!

I’ve written previously in this blog about being a salesperson for SuperTech. As we get closer and closer to the date, I’m finding it’s easy to be a salesperson when the product you’re “selling” basically sells itself.

The SuperTech Steering Committee has now entered the phase of planning when publicity and sponsorships is crucial. This week, I attended our state maintenance council’s session on proper tire inflation. While I did learn a lot about automatic tire inflation systems, I also had the chance to recruit some sponsors and potential technicians for the competition. Imagine my surprise when Mike Niemeyer of Pressure Systems International walked right up to me and said, “I’ve been reading your blog.”

In fact, several members approached me throughout the evening to say they had seen the blog or heard about SuperTech. This was a great feeling, because all of the hard work we’ve been doing publicity-wise is starting to pay off. The fact that many state maintenance council members want to get involved is fantastic. But if I really think about it, I’m not surprised, because why wouldn’t they want to get involved with an event like SuperTech?
Our goal for the next month is to get as many people interested in Nebraska’s first-ever SuperTech competition as we can. It’s spreading like a wild fire, and we’re excited to use the momentum to our advantage!