2008 STN Maintenance Program Survey

Readers asked to describe the ups, downs and in-betweens
of school bus maintenance programs

Has your transportation department gone paperless? Who inputs work order data? What influenced your maintenance program purchase? These were a few of the questions sought from the 2008 Maintenance Program survey. More than 120 mechanics, shop foremen and transportation directors submitted responses about purchasing, parts and paperwork.

Less is More?
Only about 30 percent of our respondents currently employ a paperless maintenance program. Although a number of them were using computer programs for their work orders or parts inventory, many still inputted some form of data in the old fashioned way — with pen and paper.

“We enter all info into a computer, but information is taken from a paper repair order the mechanics fill out,” said Bill Mitchell, head mechanic for Sweet Home Central Schools in Western New York. “Do you want a guy doing a spring shaft (while) playing with a computer keyboard?”

Other districts have gone completely paperless and enlist their mechanics into the data entry process. For the past nine years, mechanics at Chula Vista Elementary School District, located just south of San Diego, have been punching in their work orders on computers in the service bay. They have also gone through four separate software upgrades, which have included a learning curve each time.

“We have a transportation assistant that maintains the quality control of the work orders that come through,” said Theron Neal, Chula Vista’s fleet manager, whose 80 buses travel 750,000 miles every year. “If the data isn’t inputted correctly, than what comes out isn’t correct.”

Shop foremen/lead mechanics topped the list of employees who input data into their department’s maintenance program at 54 percent, with maintenance supervisors coming in next at almost 38 percent, mechanics at 34 percent, clerical support with 26 percent and transportation directors rounding it out at a little over 3 percent.

Keeping Track of Your Parts
Maintenance programs are only used in a quarter of the shops that responded to the survey, which in 15 instances only consisted of one individual. Although a common feature in many programs, automatic part ordering was only utilized by 6 percent of the survey’s participants. For those who did use the feature, it was well appreciated.

“It works out great,” said Tom Pelletier, fleet maintenance manager for Naperville Community Unit School District 203, located about 30 miles west of Chicago. “I don’t ever have to order parts. I just had to set up the minimum and maximum levels. For almost everything my minimum and maximum levels are both set to two (units), so that if you use something, it is automatically reordered and I’ll get it the next morning.”

Pelletier also saw the feature as a time saver, since he said he does not have to spend time throughout the day looking up the parts that have been used and need to be reordered, and none of his 120 buses ever have to sit around waiting for parts to arrive.
Marking up parts, which departments sometimes do to cover overhead, parts shrinkage, damaged parts, etc., was also performed by 12 percent of the group.

“If we purchase a part for $20, and we wish to cover the parts person’s wages and the lights and floor space, etc., we may take a 10 percent mark-up and sell the part to the fleet for $22,” explained Minnesota Public School’s Denny Coughlin.

Most of the contractors who responded that they do mark up their parts said they did not apply the costs to repairs on their own fleet.

“We only mark up on our outside repairs, which only amounts to about $4,000 to 5,000 a year,” said David Gregory, president of Certified Transportation Services, a private contractor based in Santa Ana, Calif.

According to one contractor, many of the retail garages that service personal vehicles will mark up parts as high as 40 percent.

So Many Features, So Little Time
The maintenance programs available today have any number of bells and whistles attached, many of which can either impede the maintenance process or are never used, according to some of our survey’s respondents. For James Kennett, fleet manager for Hillsborough County Public Schools’ close to 1,500 buses, the program his department currently uses is so step intensive and complicated, that his office employees just print out a paper work order and have their mechanics work off it. Someone in his office will then take the form the mechanics fill out and input the information into the program.

“In order to do something simple, like input information from a work order, you have to open three different screens. It’s too time consuming to have the mechanics input the stuff themselves,” said Kennett, whose department handles well over 100 work orders every day and must also maintain around 2,000 other vehicles for the district, including police cars, pickups, vans, wreckers and other construction equipment.

Other districts don’t have time to exploit all the extra reports many programs can output. Doug Sweet, the “one and only” mechanic for Thermalito Union School District’s eight buses in Oroville, Calif., would willingly use more of the features if he had more time “and help” to input data.

“With a small shop, one would need ways to automate or streamline the input process somehow. It just does not work without the information being in the machine,” said Sweet.