Innovative Products Save Fleets Money

Episode 348: Finding solutions to common problems faced by fleets on their trucks takes innovation. Where does innovation come from? Usually from listening closely to the customer. Simple solutions are often the best. High Bar Brands is a group of innovative companies brought together with one mission – solving problems for heavy-duty fleets.

This week we talked to Steve Hansen and Derek Quys who told us about some innovative products that their company has developed which save money for fleets. These products also protect other drivers on the roads by preventing accidents.

Show Notes: Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com for complete show notes of this episode and to subscribe to all our content.

Sponsors of this Episode

Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation: Find out how many “fault codes” your heavy-duty parts business has. Meet with us today. Visit HeavyDutyConsulting.com

Hengst Filtration: There's a new premium filter option for fleets. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hengst filters will save you. But you've got to go to HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/Hengst to find out how much.

Diesel Laptops: Diesel Laptops is so much more than just a provider of diagnostic tools. They’re your shop efficiency solution company. Learn more about everything Diesel Laptops can do for you today by visiting DieselLaptops.com today.

HDA Truck Pride: They’re the heart of the independent parts and service channel. They have 750 parts stores and 450 service centers conveniently located across the US and Canada. Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/HDATruckPride today to find a location near you.

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Transcript

Jamie Irvine:

You are listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, Jamie Irvine, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. In today's episode, we are going to focus on innovation. In this episode, we are going to be talking to a group of companies that has really made innovation a big focus of how they take care of customers. Now, one of the interviews that we're going to share with you is going to be about a relatively new product that is really there to solve a customer's problem. The second interview is a great example of a company with deep roots. We're talking about over a hundred years of innovation and how over the decades they have kept innovation at the forefront. I'm really excited about sharing today's episode with you. Let's take a minute though to talk about what it takes to be innovative and where does innovation come from?

Where's the best place for innovation to come from? One of the things that I have seen working not only interviewing so many people in the heavy-duty parts report, but working as a consultant and my own experience in my career is that common sense isn't always common. Practice and innovation really comes from listening to the voice of the customer and to understand the problems that individual people are having. And when you take a simple approach to solving problems, this is where innovation can be really at its best. And I think that both of my interviews really in this episode exemplify how important this is. And you will see from the discussions that I have that this is exactly what has occurred at both of these companies leading them to be very successful and bringing them together under one new brand name. So who am I talking about?

Well, I'm talking about High Bar Brands. They own a number of companies including Minimizer and Premier Manufacturing. So I'm really looking forward to sharing these interviews with you. Let's get started with our first conversation. I'm very excited to have my guest today. Steve Hansen, the Director of Marketing at High Bar Brands. Now, you might recognize Steve's name because when he was on the show way back in Episode 44, he was representing Minimizer, High Bar Brands owns Minimizer. They also own Premier and other business interests. And so it is great to have Steve back on The Heavy Duty Parts Report. Steve, welcome back.

Steve Hansen:

Jamie. Yes, nice to be here. Thanks for having me back.

Jamie Irvine:

Your company is always focused on trying to create high quality products that lower total cost of operation. Let's talk for a minute about Fast Flaps. First of all, what is the product and what problem is it solving?

Steve Hansen:

Right, so Fast Flaps is basically it's a clamp that holds the mud flap in place. And so traditionally, see when you put mud flaps on a truck or a trailer, you're bolting it into a bracket. This is a clamp instead of bolting it, which allows if the driver accidentally backs over a dirt pile or backs into something, it pulls the mud flap out of the clamp instead of doing any damage to the equipment or to the mud flap,

Jamie Irvine:

Right, so when you think about this situation of trucks and trailers, they're backing up, they run over something, the mudflap gets sucked under the wheel, and then all this damage gets done. I mean, that drives cost up right away.

Steve Hansen:

Yeah, it's cost, it's downtime, it's repairs. Everything just adds up so much. And when we came out with the product originally, we really focused on the vocational market knowing that dump trucks are backing into dirt piles and refuse trucks are backing into things more often. What we've seen, especially in a more recent trend, is probably seven to one sales just over the road fleets. So the 53 foot van trailer, they've all got mud flaps on the back, 99% of those mud flaps are secured onto just a straight steel angle iron, and they're bolted right onto that. And so these over the road fleets are backing into things too. They're backing into snow piles, dirt piles, loading docks. There's all kinds of hazards on the road, and the trailers now are a bit different than they used to be because they're galvanizing the frames of the trailers to help prevent corrosion. Well, when they back over the mud flap, it pulls the bracket down and pops that galvanization up. So you're talking about pretty significant damage to that trailer for a seemingly really small mistake.

Jamie Irvine:

Yeah, it's interesting. I was reading this trucker report. Let me just share with you what this driver had to say. He goes, my boss is yelling at me because I keep losing mud flaps on the tractor. The brackets are the plain old bent square steel type. These brackets keep snapping. I've yanked a flap off on a curb, and I know that backing into things as bad, however, that he feels that the mud flaps are snapping off the bracket and he sees this happening in his mirrors every few weeks. He says that when he's bobtailing on the freeway and bouncing all over the place, over time that bracket tree just becomes weakened and then it snaps off and falls off the truck. So I mean, is this a driver issue? Is this a product issue? What's going on here?

Steve Hansen:

It's both. I mean, that road vibration is a real deal, right? I mean, everything hanging on the side of the truck is constantly going through that vibration and steel will crack over time. Also, drivers are not purposely, but they back into things and it pulls on the mud flap, which will cause extensive damage also. It's just such an easy solution. I mean, when we post this on social media, this is always our highest generator for clicks, likes, shares, comments especially, and a lot of the comments say, I don't know why no one thought of this sooner. This is just the easiest thing.

Jamie Irvine:

And there's a real safety thing here. There was a Chicago Tribune report where a weld broke on this assembly and the whole thing came off the bracket, the mud flap, the light, and it actually hit a reverend and his wife with their six children. And it was a accident that ended in a fiery explosion that trapped and killed the children. I mean, absolute tragedy. Now that obviously that's not something that happens a lot. It's a pretty rare occurrence, but you'd hate to be the one driving and be the cause of that. So the Fast Flap could have saved lives.

Steve Hansen:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, like you say, that's probably an extreme example, but the reality is it does cause a lot of damage every day. You're seeing that stuff hanging on the side of the road. Well, it probably didn't just bounce to the side of the road. There's cars on the road, somebody could have hit it. There's all kinds of damage that can happen. And like I say, it's just such an easy solution. That's why they're talking mega fleets and the fleets, they do all of their own research. They'll bring in a few hundred units, they'll test it, they look at things and then they decide to spec, well, we're getting some of the nation's largest fleets are specking this on new trailers. Some of the fleets are actually retrofitting other trailers, I mean to the tune of tens of thousands of trailers on the retrofit. So it's a popular spec item and it's been studied by several fleets. And that's the proof.

Jamie Irvine:

Yeah, exactly. Hey, let's talk about that retrofit process. So I mean, obviously there's going to be that one-time cost of removing the old bracketry, installing this new one, but how quickly could someone recoup their investment with that?

Steve Hansen:

So with the way this installs, it actually installs into the exact same holes that the flap installed into. So they would keep their current bracketry, they take off the mud flap, they put this piece on, this clamp on, and then they put the mud flap back in. And so that was a common question. We actually created an installation video on it from start to finish. This was a first try opening the package and going through all of that. It was about eight minutes to install a whole set. So the back of a 53 foot trailer, removing the mud flaps, putting these on and putting the mud flaps back in took about eight minutes for the whole trailer.

Jamie Irvine:

So very simple. And once it's done, yeah, it might pull the mud flap off and you have to replace a missing mud flap, but you solve all of those other issues. You guys have had a lot going on in your company and you've got such a wide range of products. So let's talk first of all about High Bar Brands. Your website for that is high bar brands.com, so links will be in the show notes for that. But just what are the companies underneath high bar brands?

Steve Hansen:

We've got Minimizer, which we just talked about Fast Flaps with that. But Minimizer also is known for poly fenders and toolboxes and floor mats and other products. We also have Premier Manufacturing. Premier is known for coupling equipment and Jacks, they're based out of Tual, Oregon. And then recently we just acquired Viking Sales. Viking Sales is a mudflap manufacturer. So yes, Minimizer does mud flaps also with customized logos. Viking has a whole manufacturing area where they're taken from raw material to producing the mud flaps and then also adding the logos to those.

Jamie Irvine:

So that gave you a lot more control over the whole process.

Steve Hansen:

A lot more control, a lot of cost benefits so that we can help get in and help customers with larger orders too.

Jamie Irvine:

Right. And if the average listener who's maybe an owner operator or runs a small repair shop or something like that and they want to buy your products, is there a dealer locator or something that they can search for?

Steve Hansen:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can do it on the website. There's a dealer locator there. We do offer all of our products have a Buy Now button on 'em. So if you navigate to a product and click the Buy Now option, you'll see e-commerce purchasing options along with a local distributor map there also.

Jamie Irvine:

Awesome. So just hit that easy button, right? Make it super easy for people. That's awesome. I truly love innovative products like Fast Flaps, and I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Steve Hansen from Minimizer. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, but don't go anywhere because when we get back, we're going to have a conversation with Derek Quys, who has been working with Premier Manufacturing. This is a company that's been around for a hundred years and they have been bringing innovation to the commercial trucking industry for that entire time. How do they do it year over year, decade over decade? Don't go anywhere. You'll find out are you deferring maintenance because of filter cost or availability, or worse yet, are you trading down to no name filters to try to save a few bucks? Either way, your rolling the dice.

The good news, there's a new premium filter option for fleets Hengst Filtration. If you're responsible for a fleet, you won't believe how much using Hengst Filters will save you, but you've got to go to heavydutypartsreport.com/hengst to find out more. That's heavydutypartsreport.com/hengst. Head there now. At Diesel Laptops, they go way beyond diagnostic tools. They are your complete shop efficiency partner from diesel technician training to complete repair information, parts lookup tools, and robust technical support. They are there to support you every step of the way. Learn more and download your free starter pack today by visiting diesellaptops.com. That's diesellaptops.com. HDA Truck Pride is the heart of the independent parts and service channel. They have 750 parts stores and 450 service centers conveniently located across the US and Canada. Visit heavydutypartsreport.com/hdatruckpride today to find a location near you.

Again, that's heavydutypartsreport.com/hdatruckpride and let the heart of the Independent service channel take care of your commercial equipment. We're back from our break. Before the break, we were talking to Steve Hansen from Minimizer, talking about a relatively new product that is very innovative and solves a real problem. Now we're shifting gears and we're going to talk to someone, as I mentioned, who has been working for a company that has been innovating for a century a hundred years. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Derek Quys. Connection Management between a commercial truck and trailer. When we think about that, we often think fifth wheel and kingpin, and yet there's many vocations where that connection setup is not ideal and there are alternatives. I'd like to introduce you to Derek Quys, who is the Senior Director of Sales at High Bar Brands. Now one of their companies is Premier Manufacturing, and that's who we're going to talk about today, and I'm really looking forward to discussing with him their different connection components and how it can have a positive impact on fleets. So Derek, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So happy to have you here.

Derek Quys:

Hey, thanks for the invite. Look forward to this discussion, forward

Jamie Irvine:

To this discussion. Well, Derek and I go back many, many, many years. We've both worked in the heavy duty parts industry and it's really great to finally have you on the show. Very excited about that. One of the things that I enjoyed when I was selling parts and I was representing Premier Brand to our customers, we were a distributor for your company. I really appreciated some of the ways that Premier went about manufacturing their parts. So what really has made Premier stand out? How does the company have that kind of longevity? I mean, obviously there are some specific things I'd like to understand more about that.

Derek Quys:

Well, it's interesting because what really set us apart from everyone else was the alloys that we used, very unique material. It work hardens. It's designed such that if it performs exceptionally well in severe service applications, a lot of people in the industry, they have no clue. They would just basically steer towards our portfolio products. They know it works well, and yet it's because of the materials we use and our latching mechanisms and what we do to provide not only longevity, but also safety in the marketplace is what's pretty outstanding with our group.

Jamie Irvine:

And it's one thing to say, okay, we're going to start a company. We're going to start making heavy-duty parts. But in order to really be able to be a pioneer in those alloys, what was required? What kinds of people came together to make that a reality?

Derek Quys:

So our founder was a pattern maker. So when they first started, Premier was actually a pattern and a tool and dye maker. So if you wanted to make a widget, you would approach our founder and he would sit back and basically create molds, tools that are used in the steel industry or the casting industry. And it wasn't until that time as logging started to take off that he says, why am I making things to allow other people to make money? Why don't I just do this myself? And it's pretty interesting, the mind that was behind this individual and what he created and even some simple things that how he created the pattern, he basically scribed on a piece of plywood dry and we have etchings of those today. And then from there, he was able to make a three dimensional component from a piece of plywood, which is unbelievable.

And him and his, because he had a metallurgical background, tried different alloys, different things. And if you think about our gold standard today, which is pre Malloy, the material that work hardens, like I talked about earlier, the base material is very similar to what you see on a railway track. If you notice those tracks, they're always shiny. So as friction builds up on it, it gets harder and harder and harder. So very aggressive material, and yet it's very pliable. It can yield and perform really well. So that's where it's grown today and how they, as they've developed new geometry and new designs have really been successful.

Jamie Irvine:

It's just amazing when you come someone with that, like you say, that background in alloys and metal and then that entrepreneurial vision to be able to say there's an opportunity here and then to see that need in forestry. But again, this was back in the 1920s, the mid twenties, the early thirties. I mean, it's not like it is today. So just an enormous accomplishment to be able to succeed the way that the company has.

Derek Quys:

Yeah, you're right. And it's interesting, as I've grown with this company, models that were designed in the fifties and sixties are still used today and specified by major carriers. It's funny to see that.

Jamie Irvine:

Unbelievable, unbelievable. I'd like to talk now about what applications are really best suited to use the pintle hook and drawbar eye connection. We already talked about logging, but there's more than just logging.

Derek Quys:

In Canada, for instance, very vocational. You look at the gravel industry, you see a lot of those type of connections and why those are important versus perhaps say using a fifth wheel is you need some sort of articulation, right? And the vehicles are shorter, so you want to be able to have a vehicle that can go in and out of certain road conditions that are different and you need that articulation and you need these connection points to work well. So that's the gravel industry. If you look at long combination vehicles today, fleets are really dealing with driver shortages. Fuel costs are high. So now when you have one truck at multiple trailers, you can carry a lot more cargo, which is a lot more efficient today for the fleet, they have one driver versus two drivers in a trailer. So you have long combination vehicles that use pin hooks and drawbar in those applications. And then into the medium duty market where you have utility companies, municipalities or construction companies that will have work trailers that have a drawbar eye and they need maybe a combination coupling where it's got a ball or acts as a pintle hook as well. So there's many different connection points out there that could use a pintle hook and a draw bar eye connection.

Jamie Irvine:

What innovation has Premier brought to the pin hook setup? I'd like to learn about that.

Derek Quys:

We hit something pretty big about a year and a half ago. We were approached by a major carrier in the United States, one of the largest carriers. And it was surprising when they approached us, they were dealing with disconnects, not because of the pin hook failing, but because drivers would forget to close the latch on a pintle hook. And when they approached us with this, we were thinking, really, you got to hook up your glad hands, plug in your coiled electrical, you hook up your safety chains, how can you forget to close a latch? Something as simple as that. But because of the applications and perhaps the time, they may forget to close the latch. And this carrier was telling me that they deal with one disconnect per day. Now they have tens of thousands of vehicles on the road. So although that seems like a lot, it's still significant.

And they were doing things such as putting speed bumps in their yard, things to jar the truck and trailer connection apart so that they would drop the trailer in the yard and they would deal with one major accident per month. Fortunately, they haven't had what we call a nuclear litigation, which is basically in the tens of millions of dollars due to fatalities. But it was serious enough that they approached us and said, can you come up with a solution that takes driver error away? And that's basically a mechanical device that would automatically close the latch if the driver forgot to close it. And how this device works is we designed an air cylinder that's connected to the air takeup system in the back, the slack adjuster, which is an air chamber in the back that has a second port. And when the driver releases that emergency brake, it now trips a little cylinder inside the latch mechanism and automatically closes the latch. So if the driver forgets to close the latch, as soon as they release their emergency brakes, it trips the system and closes it for them.

Jamie Irvine:

Awesome, awesome. So when I think about these kinds of innovation, and I think about a fleet's constant pursuit of lowering total cost of operation, this isn't really a cost per mile thing, but you've already talked about litigation. I mean, this does affect the total cost of operation.

Derek Quys:

Absolutely. You think even dropping a trailer in the yard, the damage that occurs to that vehicle, the load that's already inside, so cost, we look at cost per mile, like you discussed, this is a different type of cost that is very challenging for a fleet. You can't really put a stamp on it, but you don't know what's in the vehicle that got damaged because the trailer dropped, the damage done to the trailer itself, let alone if it happens on the highway. And most recently in Alberta, there was a case where a dolly disconnected from the vehicle and a fatality ensued. So if we can take away some of these pieces that basically could protect the populace and eliminate a black mark on the transportation industry by having a more safer vehicle, there's a lot of cost savings there that perhaps we don't see and can't put a stamp on.

Jamie Irvine:

But overall, still affecting the total cost because liability, that damage to the vehicles, the injury to people and the public, I mean, all of those things contribute to negatively impacting a fleet and the industry as a whole. So fantastic to be involved in that kind of solution. Derek, it is not part of our outline, but I was remembering something about selling your product. One of the things that I remember is that a lot of fleets with the pintle hook set up, if they weren't necessarily in a drop and hook kind of thing, like in a fleet that does a lot of trucks coming in and switching trailers, sometimes these units, like in a gravel instance, would be hooked up for a long period of time and because of the environments that they're working in, there was a lot of stuff on the road. And I remember guys saying that it was a real pain when these things would seize up. You guys engineered some really interesting technology on one of your pintle hooks to actually be able to address that issue. Could we talk about that a little bit?

Derek Quys:

Sure. It's called the Extended Life. So in our 2000 series couplings, which are very common in Canada as well, corrosion is the monster that everyone's dealing with, whether it's due to electrical failures to other things, corrosion's the monster that we have out there. What we did is we evaluated our pivot point or the weakest link, which is basically the latch mechanism. And what we did is we decided, we bore out the pivot points, we put oil impregnated bronze bushings in there, which hold about 30% of their weight in lubrication. We plated our pins, we use stainless steel springs as well as these are drilled and tapped to accept lubrication. Something as simple as that has basically eliminated a corrosion issue from that connection point or that pivot point. So it's been really groundbreaking. And as a matter of fact, it's become our number one selling component in Canada because a lot of these fleets, they could take their existing 2000 series model, put this extended life latch kit into it, and they're back to OEM specifications and a much longer life latch mechanism for this market.

Jamie Irvine:

Right? So if you're going to upgrade from the 370 to the 2000, you're going to go right to the one with the extended, but if you've already got a 2000, you can actually upgrade it with this kit. So either way you can get there.

Derek Quys:

You bet. So the 370 model would go to a 2300, for instance, 2300 EL is the extended life model, but yes, you got it.

Jamie Irvine:

Yeah, it's been a couple years since I've sold it, so I don't remember all. Yeah, good memory, the part numbers. Derek, I'd like to talk a little bit about front end assemblies, and I kind of was interested about how does your patented products improve the bushing performance and the longevity of those bushings?

Derek Quys:

Well, when we first developed the swivel drawbar eye, for instance, that's part of this front end assembly. Back in the day, we would use a coarse thread, for instance, and castellated nut. And at that standpoint, we also had a solid steel housing, but you don't get any preload. What preload is is basically when you're tightening the nut, you want to have some sort of stress on the thread so that you basically have a much tighter connection. So when you have a steel housing, you had metal to metal wear, so accelerated wear, but you had jarring back and forth, we needed to use a castellated nut. And when you put the cotter pin in it, you can never get an infinite adjustment from there. So we had to go through some different renditions. And then so we went from the steel housing to a bush housing where we had bushings in place.

Well, the nice thing about any bushing, it absorbs a lot of shock and vibration, which transfers to other things. So yes, we're in the off-road applications. These poor drivers are getting jarred as it is, so they may not notice it, but when you can take and absorb a lot of the shock and vibration that occurs, a lot of your other components, you're extending the life of those components, whether you know it or not. So we went from that basically rubber bushings inside of a housing, and then we've transitioned to poly bushings, which basically are impervious to chemical attack, extreme temperature conditions. We have applications in South America where they're dealing with 40 degrees Celsius temperatures, severe off roads, hauling 70 tons per trailer to other applications in Northern Alberta where it's 40 below, right? And you want these bushings to still perform, maintain their elasticity and provide performance throughout the vehicle. We've done some new things as well for severe service applications where it contains everything within the load. So under force, tremendous force, it basically brings everything within the housing and it gives you a solid base even though it's not metal to metal. So there's some unique things we've done with our front ends.

Jamie Irvine:

Infinite adjustability. That was something that got my attention right away. Can you just go into a little bit more detail about how important that is?

Derek Quys:

Yeah. Think about the load. We're carrying tens of thousands of pounds of cargo, whether it's gravel, liquid, you name it, and you're on the highway and you are stopping and starting. You are maneuvering, maybe you're off road. The forces that occur at speeds within a small little frame has a tremendous amount of spike load and changes loading conditions. Just imagine if you did not have infinite adjustment and you had incremental adjustment, you now have loose components. So you now are accelerating a lot of the stress on other components, as I mentioned earlier on the vehicles. But think about the coupling component itself. You think about the accelerated wear that occurs. So if you want to keep the life of your components and enjoy longevity, you want to make sure that you provide infinite adjustability so that you now have tight connections that don't accelerate where on other components on that connection point. So our infinite adjustments go from housing swivel, drop our eyes, infinite adjustments on our hinge assembly, even infinite adjustments on the air takeup system that we have on our pintle hooks. You don't have to adjust it. It's set. So if you can do that for your complete connection point, you've now provided a really good system for the drivers and the fleet managers.

Jamie Irvine:

Awesome. Well thanks for taking a minute to explain that. If you could leave people with just one thing to remember about Premier, what's that one thing?

Derek Quys:

We are a solutions provider, and it's part of the High Bar Brands mantra where we are a solutions provider to the industry. We're always going to look for things that could improve performance life and provide satisfaction to the end user that they know they have a domestic made manufacturer with direct people that are there to work with them, help provide solutions them and give them something that they need in their applications.

Jamie Irvine:

Well, I hope you enjoyed both of my conversations with people who are working for innovative companies who are bringing innovative products to the commercial trucking industry. I think this is so important that everybody who works in the industry who is supplying products to the trucking industry, they need to do what both of these companies have done, which is listen to their customers, identify problems, and come up with really great solutions. If you enjoyed today's episode, why not head over to heavydutypartsreport.com and hit that follow button? Sign up to our weekly email so you never miss out on any of our content. If you like listening to the podcast on your podcast player of choice, hit that follow button for free. And if it gives you the option, give us a five star rating and a review that helps us with reach. And if you like watching the video version, head over to our YouTube channel, hit that subscribe button in the bell notification so you never miss out. As always, I want to encourage all of our listeners, well, I guess in the context of today's episode, I want to encourage you to be innovative, but as always, I also want to encourage you to Be Heavy Duty.