From Carts to Cartage: Hogtown fleet manager is CFMS’s Mr. Fix It
TORONTO — When Canada’s new Fleet Maintenance Manager of the Year Steve Plaskos was a young boy growing up mid-town Toronto, he’d fabricate go-carts and other vehicles from parts he’d scrounge in the laneways around his home — “old ironing boards and the like,” he says.
These days, he makes sure that the hundreds of class-8 garbage trucks that wind their way through those same back alleys stay in top shape. That young go-cart fan grew up to be a keen heavy-duty technician and he’s now Manager of Fleet Services for The City of Toronto, overseeing almost 1,000 vehicles and almost 100 technicians.
maintenance, colleagues say
This week, on the final day of the Canadian Fleet Maintenance Seminar (CFMS), the 52-year -old technician was recognized as the country’s best fleet maintenance manager 2006.
The man who nominated him is his colleague Ross Petrini, the city’s operations manager. Petrini hired Plaskos about nine years ago.
“When we first hired him, we’d use him for all kinds of trouble shooting and every time we put him someplace, he gave 100 percent plus. He was always coming up with solutions,” Petrini told Today’s Trucking.
In presenting the award at the CFMS, Volvo Canada’s Service Marketing Manager Don Coldwell said Plaskos is heavily involved in developing the City’s apprenticeship programs and that he works closely with Centennial College, hoping to attract more young people into the profession.
“He has a great rapport with all the employees,” Coldwell said, “And he’s the kind of manager who embraces change.”
In addition to ensuring that Toronto’s fleet of garbage trucks, recycle units, forestry vehicles — everything but police, fire and ambulance fleets — Plaskos has to be the picture of preventative maintenance. His trucks perform in the public arena and he cannot allow for so much as a puff of smoke to come out of a pipe because some taxpayer’s going to report it.
And in the public eye, Petrini says, you have to account for every single penny spent. “You have to know how much every drop of oil costs.”
For more on what it’s like for Plaskos to run Canada’s largest municipal fleet, read the July August Today’s Trucking.
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