TRUCKERS AS ENTREPRENEURS

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June 20, 2007 Vol. 3, No. 12

A bunch of decades ago when I’d been in this motor-noter game for just a couple of years, Tom Kleysen took me on a tour of the Kleysen Transport facilities in Winnipeg. We did the office and the shop and the dispatch room and all the usual corners of the enterprise. And then we walked out into the back 40.

And that’s where the Kleysen story, and maybe the story of trucking at large in some respects, really resided. That’s where the evidence of Hubert Kleysen’s inventiveness was on display – seemingly acres of the company founder’s experiments in building better trailers, better loaders, better whatevers. Rusting hulks in some cases. Some of them worked, I guess, many didn’t, but Tom’s father never stopped trying to build a superior mouse trap. And that urge to innovate, I learned, is a key characteristic shared by many practitioners of the trucking art.

Over the years I couldn’t possibly count how many good ideas, drawn from truck drivers and owners themselves, have been transformed into actual products that, the market decided, were worth having around.

I’ve come across a couple recently, and wrote about them in this newsletter’s collection of new and interesting items.

The Warepads from GSM Innovative Products are simple but apparently effective in extending spring trailer suspension life, developed in the field by a second-generation fleet owner, Greg Manchik. He runs F.J. Manchik & Son Trucking, a gravel/sand/salt-hauling outfit founded in 1960 by his father. They run 10 gravel trains out of Lenox, Michigan, so I should think he knows where the problems lie with suspension hangers and equalizers. The local market likes his Warepads, and now he’s trying to send the word a little further out.

A rather larger and more expensive product, the Yendor power inverter (well, it’s more than that, but frankly I’m not sure what to call it), was on display for the first time publicly just down from our booth at the recent Atlantic Truck Show in Moncton, N.B. Rodney Foreman is the enterprising owner-operator who developed this one, using the alternator in a refrigeration unit to produce hotel power for the sleeper. It’s quite ingenious, it seems to me, and is just now coming on the market.

Significantly, Foreman had the support of his ultimate boss, Robert Irving, who runs Midland Transport and the rest of the Irving empire’s trucking group. Foreman has five trucks on at Midland and is probably no more adept at bringing a good idea to market than your next trucker. But with a little guidance from the top guy, he found a well regarded patent lawyer and the development wheels were set in motion.

Even more significantly, the first big investor in Yendor Inc. was that same patent lawyer – who probably knows a good thing when he sees one.

What characterizes both Manchik and Foreman, beyond their obvious inventiveness, is their lack of knowledge in the realm of marketing and promotion. That’s hardly surprising but it has felled more than a few entrepreneurs over the centuries. So I wish them both luck and I’ll help if I can.

I guess that’s in part what this newsletter is all about. I said at the outset, and I write it below every time out, that one of the aims here is to give exposure to good ideas and interesting products that haven’t enjoyed the marketing push that the Freightliners and Caterpillars of our world can muster. So bring ’em on.

SPEAKING OF ENGINES, sort of, I recently enjoyed a tour of the Detroit Diesel plant in Redford, Michigan. The market slowdown means they’re only building about 50 Series 60 engines a day, down from their normal 150, but the plant is buzzing anyway. The folks there are gearing up for the new ‘HDEP’ diesel that will be formally introduced this fall. It’s a world engine that we’ll first see in Freightliner trucks on this side of the Atlantic, but it will also be built in Germany and elsewhere and find its way into other trucks in the Daimler family. Parts are sourced from all over the world.

I’m sworn to secrecy on some aspects of this thing – my colleague Peter Carter and I were the first members of the press to see it in the plant and the test cells where it’s undergoing final tweaking — but what I’ve already written is that there will be four versions of the engine. We’ll see a big 15.6 liter model, a 14.8 that will replace the Series 60 eventually, a 12.8 that will replace the Mercedes MB4000, and a smaller model of 10.5 liter displacement. By 2010, in one form or another, it will be the only engine available in Freightliner trucks.

One interesting aspect of the engine, in larger displacements I presume, is a projected ‘B50’ life of 1.2 million miles. That’s the standard measure of estimated durability, the mark at which 50% of the engines out there will need their first overhaul, the other 50% still pulling freight. One million miles is the more common B50 life for big diesels, smaller ones reaching about 800,000.

The Redford plant also builds Mercedes-designed drive axles, incidentally, and I have to admit to being very impressed by one machine in there – the one that cuts the teeth in a pinion gear, working from a raw, blank casting. In traditional cutting, I was told, the process takes about seven hours with a scrap rate that reaches over 35%. In this case the department used to have 40 employees. But with their new and mightily computerized machine the cutting takes something like six minutes with a scrap rate of 2% in a department that now needs only six workers (don’t worry, the rest were placed elsewhere). Hard not to be impressed.

AND FINALLY A PROMISE: I will not use the word ‘solution’ to describe software, hardware… or headwear for that matter. Nor will I allow anyone else to employ the word in this newsletter. That is my solemn promise to you.

Now, if only I could get the rest of the world to join me.

Is it just me, or is that the most over-used word in our current marketing lexicon? Gee whiz, it bugs me, the worst offenders being folks on the soft side of our world. Engine makers don’t call that nifty new 10-litre diesel a solution. Tires are never solutions. Nor are trailer floors or torque wrenches or whole trucks. Only software and the like is ever a solution. How come?

Sorry, just needed that minor rant. See you next time.

This newsletter is published every two weeks. It’s a heads-up notice about what’s going on with trucking technology as well as what you can see at www.todaystrucking.com where you’ll find in-detail coverage of nearly everything that’s new. Plus interesting products that may not have had the ‘air play’ they deserved within the last few months. Subscribe today!

And while you’re there at www.todaystrucking.com, check out the Decision Centers. They’re essentially libraries on specific subjects like Engines or Braking Systems. We’ve gathered all manner of information from maintenance manuals to research reports – and we’re always finding more – to help you make decisions about spec’ing, operating, and maintaining trucks and truck systems.

If you have comments of whatever sort about Product Watch, or maybe a gizmo I should know about, please contact me at rlockwood@newcom.ca.

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Rolf Lockwood is editor emeritus of Today's Trucking and a regular contributor to Trucknews.com.


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