METABETCHOUAN, Que. — Transport Jean-Marie Bernier says it has nearly doubled its oil change intervals by switching to DURON 15W-40 as its primary heavy-duty engine oil.

The company, which runs freight into Ontario, the Maritimes and most US border states, says it traditionally changed the oil in its trucks every 25,000 km.

“Our trucks are on the road six days a week and must be pulled off the road for their oil change, which takes two hours,” points out vehicle fleet manager, Dany Bernier. “Its been six or seven months since we switched to DURON. With the same engines under the same conditions and no new filters, we extended our oil changes to 40,000 km.”

He adds hes confident they could run to 50,000 km between oil changes “but we chose to keep a security buffer just in case a truck is too far away when its due for an oil change.”

Transport Jean-Marie Bernier runs mostly Cummins N14 and ISX engines as well as a few Cats.

“Most of our clients’ warehouses are moving on the road, so they prefer just-in-time deliveries, explains Bernier. “As we’re expected to provide shorter delivery times, we’re pressured to reduce the time and money spent on oil changes, so the more we extend oil changes, the better.”

Petro-Canada developed a special oil sampling program for the fleet to determine how far it could stretch drain intervals.

“When we first made the switch, we didn’t expect such an improvement,” admits Bernier. “We’ve achieved a definite benefit with DURON, which translates into huge savings considering the quantity of trucks we have on the road.”

Petro-Canada officials say its DURON 15W-40 heavy-duty engine oil is free of the impurities found in many other conventional oils.