Although this month’s headline is borrowed from the 1991 song by C+C Music Factory, I can assure you it has nothing to do with the dance group or Arsenio Hall,who may have formulated it as a skit on his TV talk show. However, I can identify with the sentiment.
I’m always studying other mechanics’ service trucks, whether it’s at a stop light or a truck stop, but always while passing them on a four-lane road.
I notice how clean and polished their truck is, or conversely, how mud-encrusted it is. Either way, it makes me conscious of how my truck looks to other people, especially customers. I have co-workers who growl that they’ve got too much work to do to waste time washing their truck and that “customers don’t want somebody afraid to get dirty.
”But I’ve had customers mention that a clean, organized truck suggests an organized mind with an attention to detail, which is the sort of person they want working on their $500,000 machine. There is nothing there, however, about having a clean mind.
I always look for addons and customized features on the other service trucks. If I like something I see—hmm— I’ll copy it to use on my truck.
I’ve noticed the way utility trucks store rigging and chains in nifty racks in their center bay. I copied them. Lights mounted on the ends of cranes looked like a good way to spread light over a broader area after dark. Consider it copied.
Flood lights mounted on the bottom corner of one truck’s service body looked like they’d cast a ground-level light to illuminate the ground around the truck for better footing and wouldn’t shine in my eyes every time I looked toward the truck. Yeah, I copied it.
A lube trailer with tanks, hose reels, and dispensing systems that can be deployed when needed, leaving valuable space for tools and supplies on the service truck. Copied, copied, copied.Do the ideas I get from other service trucks always work out?Well, a removable step mounted in my truck’s receiver hitch made getting in and out of the center bay a whole lot easier.However, the power cord placed on the boom-mount- ed light kept getting tangled every time I extended or retracted the crane. Hmm, I should have seen that coming, shouldn’t I?
But I never stop looking for ideas on other service trucks that might work on mine.
