How long have you been at Shamrock? How long in your current role?
I’ve been here a little over three years in my role. I was brought in from the outside, having been a regional manager for other companies for over 20 years.
What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
We are the backbone of the company; if we don’t do what we do, all the other departments suffer. We pride ourselves on not having any rental equipment, which means we’re doing everything we’re supposed to be doing.
We as a company have great pride in showing our customers the warehouse and shop. A lot of companies don’t want to show their maintenance facility, but we’re prideful – it’s a selling point for Shamrock.
I’m especially proud of working at Shamrock, because when we visit other locations or new acquisitions, they want to be us. They want Shamrock trucks, Shamrock shirts, Shamrock hats, etc. Every person that’s here wants to be here.
How would you explain your job to someone outside of your field?
We handle so many different facets of Shamrock, from logistics to part management to vehicle management. We assist every department in the company. There are good days and bad days, but not one day is the same. I like to say that we invent ways to break stuff – it’s very hard to plan day by day.
What’s your favorite thing about Shamrock?
There’s a good group of people here that want to see the same thing for Shamrock. We don’t always agree on how to get there, but we have a good group of people here.
What are the biggest challenges in fleet management today, and how do you manage them? Supply availability? Cost of goods? Scheduled maintenance?
A lot of the challenges are related to surplus; our vendors just don’t have the amount of materials they did two years ago. For example, I’ve spent the past two and a half years trying to buy more pick-up trucks; our suppliers were on the books for 640 units per year, but that got cut to 100 and they might have one customer that needs all 100 trucks. The supply and demand for everything is so tight, I need to outthink everyone else because I have to predict what my team’s needs will be for the next two weeks, since what’s available today can be gone tomorrow.
Supply availability varies. If I overnight a part from Canada it used to take two or three days, but now it takes up to ten. We’re 40% higher on cost of goods this year than we were this time last year, on every consumable product we have.
Scheduled maintenance hasn’t changed dramatically, since I run everything off of hours and mileage. Most of our big trucks are on schedule for an oil change every six weeks, and we try to see trucks that go out of state every two weeks. The shop is open from 6am to midnight, so we have lots of availability to see vehicles. Each unit in our fleet generates a certain amount of capital per day, so each day a vehicle is down is a loss in revenue. Since our team works so quickly, we’re able to bring trucks to our headquarters from as far as Richmond for maintenance and service.
We play a big part in customer satisfaction as well. Our team is what makes Shamrock so reliable – we work after hours, on weekends, or whatever it takes to get our units as safe as possible on the road. We’ve even taken on work with customers’ vehicles to try to help where we can.
What does an average work day look like for you?
I’m normally here between 6-6:15am, leave around 6:30pm, and my phone stops ringing around 10pm. No day is the same! I manage two shifts here – from trying to manage parts, breakdowns and whatever Shamrock’s requirements are, sometimes we have to stop and shift to something different to get our work done. For example, today I pulled my warehouse guys from the floor and sent them up to Danville, V.A. to retrieve a truck. One of our drivers had a family emergency and had to stop, and our team will take care of his truck and its load so that work can pick back up tomorrow and the customer won’t experience any loss of service.
How does having an in-house fleet services team benefit customers and Shamrock’s overall quality of service?
Everything is personal for us, because we see the drivers every day and build relationships within the company. We do 80-85% of the maintenance work in house, even with Shamrock’s outlying branches, because we can do the work more efficiently and for a lower cost. We have a process in place where we check every facet of every unit when it comes through our doors, because our goal is to have the safest vehicles on the road. We’ve made significant strides in this area in the past three years. If the drivers believe in us, it makes both our job and their job easier.
How does having an in-house fleet services team make Shamrock a leader in the field?
Our operational readiness rate is about 90%. There are things that happen that are out of anyone’s control, of course, like accidents, etc., but at any given time we’re able to move vehicles to Florida, Richmond or New Bern and there’s never a question of if the vehicle is safe to go.
We’ve worked really hard to build a lot of respect within the company, especially by doing preventive and scheduled maintenance on vehicles, as well as repairs. We’re seeing the units more often and can make updates and repairs as needed, instead of having to react to accidents. Every single one of our tankers is able to haul hazardous material, is inspected and can get out on the road.
How is technology being used to optimize fleet management and maintenance in the environmental services industry?
We’re a strong JJ Keller user, so every Class A truck has an ELD (electronic logging device) in it so we can track mileage, location, geofencing, etc. We even have an internal program that pulls information so we know if drivers are on time or on location. This system makes Shamrock a leader in the field because it means a customer can ask us a question about their work any time and we can show where our trucks are. 99% of the time we can tell where every truck and operator is and what they’re going to do next.
This system also allows our dispatcher to see where all of the company’s assets are at any time, and even who’s finishing or starting a shift, so we can schedule customer needs. We’re able to retrieve parts and go work on a repair without holding up anything for customers.
How has the pandemic changed your work?
The pandemic hasn’t changed what we do, so much as it’s changed being able to predict things. Parts are so hard to get right now. It was much easier to make a mistake two years ago, but now with costs skyrocketing there’s a lot more troubleshooting. Since there is so much more cost involved, we’re doing a lot of double checking of our parts, especially on the electronic side, since sensors that were $70-$80 two years ago are now $300 or more.
What makes your job critical to operations at Shamrock?
If we don’t do what we do, the rest of Shamrock can’t do what they need to do. We really pride ourselves on our work – we want to see trucks on our maintenance schedule, not when they have an accident. We have a good group of guys here who work hard; they average 55 hours in a slow week to 75 hours in a busy week. Each of our team members has a different expertise, making us a dynamic group.