Preventative Bus Maintenance
Your car’s finished. It’s broken down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, and you don’t know what you’re going to do. How will you get to work tomorrow? How will you get the kids to school? How will you get home tonight?
Most of us have been in that sort of situation at some point in our lives with our personal vehicles. But the situation can be just as frustrating, if not more so, for owners of passenger buses. Oftentimes, these vehicles are not simply methods of getting from one place to another - they are revenue-generating pieces of equipment for owners’ businesses.
Many mechanical problems commonly found in buses can be fended off entirely with a good preventative maintenance program, and that is why BusGroup offers such a program to its customers through a trusted network of service providers.
Premier Parts is one of the service providers with whom BusGroup entrusts its customers. Located in College Park, Georgia, Premier Parts is a leading provider of equipment and mechanical service in the Southeast. Steve Wickham, general manager of Premier Parts, says a main reason preventative maintenance is so important for buses is the fact that it eliminates unnecessary downtime. “If a bus is down, it’s not making money or doing the job it was built and bought to do,” he points out. “That’s usually the main focus for our customers.”
BusGroup takes steps to avoid this sort of situation with the products it sells. “We have all the BusGroup customers come in for regular oil changes,” Wickham explains. “While it’s in here for that, we check the safety systems and the amount of buildup on the brakes and see if the headlights, taillights, brake lights and running lights all work.” Premier Parts personnel also check buses’ windows for cracks, the tires for proper air pressure as prescribed by the Department of Transportation and any other safety-related systems that might be equipped on the buses.
The most critical items to keep maintained, Wickham stresses, are the tires and brakes. “It’s pretty obvious why that is — we want to keep our customers from running into someone else!” he says. “Because we pay attention to those sorts of details when a bus is brought in for its oil change, we can catch problems before they become major issues — and it doesn’t take much time at all for a little problem to become a major issue.”
One of the beneficiaries of BusGroup’s preventative maintenance program is J. Airport Connection in Riverdale, Georgia. J. Airport Connection provides charter services for corporations, schools, church groups and other organizations throughout the Greater Atlanta area, and their fleet of vehicles includes buses seating 15 to 35 passengers that they purchased from BusGroup. Satchel Jester, president of J. Airport Connection, says preventative maintenance is crucial for his company’s vehicles. “A bus that’s down means we have revenue not coming in,” Jester states. “In our line of work, it’s critical to keep our buses on the road. Plus, if we have a bus break down on the job, it reflects negatively on our company with our customers, and they will be less likely to use us again in the future.”
Jester says one reason he takes part in BusGroup’s preventative maintenance program, rather than taking his vehicles to a regular automotive mechanic, is the fact that BusGroup’s service providers specialize in his products. “If we went somewhere else, they might not be familiar with our type of vehicles,” he explains. “But with BusGroup, that’s what they do — work with commercial vehicles. They know the equipment inside and out.”
In the end, Wickham emphasizes, businesses looking to save money by not keeping up with maintenance for their vehicles will only create bigger problems for themselves later. “You might save a little cash by putting off your oil changes and inspections, but when the engine seizes up and dies with customers in the bus, you’ll be out thousands of dollars,” Wickham says. “Is any money you’d save really worth the lives of your customers? I don’t think so.”