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We welcome letters for publication on transport topics. Address them to Commercial Motor. Dorset House, Stamford Street, London 8E1.
I would like to make known some observations on maintenance costs in light of the remarks quoted in your columns of July 2.
Just over two years ago my company announced a pence per mile maintenance scheme for the operators of our vehicles. The scheme was derived from intensive investigation made by our accountants and engineers after consultation with numerous large operators. The operators were selected as being both road haulage specialists and transport sections of manufacturing groups.
Our investigators found it extremely difficult to obtain the required information. The records which were made available seemed to lack detail of costs relative to incidental adjustments and replacements. The hidden costs of overheads were not readily apparent.
How many light bulbs per vehicle per year? How much to replace them in time? It's the small items like these which mount up and in the long run make the biggest contribution to maintenance costs.
Maintenance costs obviously play a large part in operating costs, a point noted quite forcibly during recent discussion on the subject with a large vehicle operating concern. A particular aspect which came to light during this discussion was the down-time resulting from vehicles running out of fuel. In this particular instance it was by far the largest contributing factor to the vehicle's down-time. It was reported that UK manufacturers do not know the maintenance costs of the existing models up to 100,000 miles. My question is, does the operator?
Where is the manufacturer to look for his guidance? Admittedly, there are certain pieces of information to which the manufacturer has access through claims, etc, and recommended servicing requirements. But there are many other aspects to which only the operator has access.
Reverting to our pence per mile maintenance scheme, it was interesting to note that although a considerable number of operators expressed interest in the scheme no one actually took it up or even commented whether the costs were high or low. We can only assume, therefore, that the operators were unaware of their own true maintenance costs and were unable to make a satisfactory comparison.
Incidentally, we would point out that many guarantees extend to 75,000 miles, and not 40,000 as was quoted.
J. B. WILSON, Joint Asst. Service Manager, Fodens Ltd.