Q&A: Bruce Stockton Talks Maintenance Challenges
Bruce Stockton
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Bruce Stockton
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Bruce Stockton has headed up equipment and maintenance for fleets ranging from CFI to Kenan Advantage. Most recently he’s hung out his own shingle, consulting with fleets on total cost of ownership and improving uptime, as president of Stockton Solutions.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
HDT: Tell me more about what you’re doing now.
Stockton: A lot of fleets want to talk TCO, but not claim it. It is an investment. Also, I’m a substitute bus driver. And I’m finding that school districts keep buses for quite a while, so they’re just now starting to have the problems with emissions [equipment] that we’ve been dealing with.
HDT: You’re a big proponent of fluid analysis, and we’re not talking just oil. How can that help fleets?
Stockton: Yes. Coolant is as important these days as the lubricants. When I was with Kenan Advantage was when I started to first enjoy the data I would get from the oil samples, because they were doing oil samples when I got there. But at a lot of fleets, the question is, who’s looking at the data and what are you doing about it? It’s sort of like going to the doctor and getting a blood test and not having it analyzed to tell you what’s wrong or what’s right. There’s real value in that, which I never saw before because I worked mostly for fleets that traded trucks every three or four years with less than a half million miles and were typically under warranty. [So we didn’t do oil analysis.] What I learned is with the emissions engines – and everybody puts some EGR [cooled exhaust gases] back into the engine – it’s definitely having an effect on the life of the engine and other components.
HDT: I understand you got a …Read the rest of this story
