Greyhound sees benefits flow in from fluid sampling

For any plant hire specialist, the productivity and performance of each unit is crucial to the success of its business. To deliver a high-quality service to customers, while maintaining high residual fleet value, an integrated preventative maintenance programme is key to keeping kit in top condition.

For Oswestry-based national plant hire specialist Greyhound Plant Services, central to preserving the performance of its 450-strong fleet is regular fluid sampling. By incorporating it into the heart of its business, Greyhound has developed an integrated preventative maintenance programme that has become a central part of its ongoing business development and service delivery.

So serious is the firm about the continuity of its maintenance that it has made a 12-year investment in fluid sampling with Finning, enabling it to make full use of the reporting, advice and technical information gathered by the plant supplier’s fluid sampling service team.

Using the whole range of fluid sampling options, Greyhound’s national service team, headed by service and product support manager Keith Richards, has access to vital information on each piece of equipment in the fleet.

Richards explains: “All our plant is regularly serviced using maintenance facilities at our Oswestry head office and, due to the nature of our business, we also have a fleet of mobile engineers carrying out servicing requirements on-site for longer-term hires.”

As part of the service routine, each time a piece of plant receives its 500-hour service, fluid samples including engine oil, hydraulic, transmission, and final drives are taken and forwarded to Finning’s Fluid Analysis and Interpretation Facility in Leeds for testing and diagnosis of equipment health.

“Having always understood the importance of preventative maintenance, we recognised some years ago that to stay one step ahead of our competition, we needed to embrace all forms of business improvement,” Richards says. “A good example of this is our adoption of the e-mail reporting system. Because the value of our plant is significant, our business knowledge of any potential issue is extremely valuable.”

Greyhound is one of the first customers to opt to use the e-mail service, instead of receiving information on fluid sampling by post. This means that all information gathered from the analysis of each sample by Finning’s team of diagnosticians is e-mailed straight to Greyhound and simultaneously made available on the web.

These reports include detailed recommendations on each machine compartment’s health and suggested corrective action where appropriate. This is achieved by putting the fluid sample through a rigorous series of analytical and physical tests.

“Thanks to the detail of the information we receive, we have been able to react quickly to prevent plant failure,” Richards says. “Being able to prevent an engine or transmission failure can save the business tens of thousands of pounds in repair or replacement bills, not to mention lost revenue and the problem of getting a replacement piece of equipment out to site at a minute’s notice.”

Information gleaned from fluid sampling helps the hire firm identify issues with its plant that can be solved by scheduling preventative maintenance at a time convenient for customers, reducing costly downtime.

“For example, when we discovered a high level of iron in our oil sampling for one of our excavators, we knew that there was metal-to-metal contact in the gears that would more than likely lead to a parts failure within 100 hours,” says Richards.
Knowing this meant Greyhound was able to source a replacement unit and schedule a repair.

Richards adds: “What’s more, as our customers also recognise the importance of oil sampling, a greater number are requesting the fluid sampling information as part of the machine’s service history before they agree to hire.

“Being able to supply all of this data not only reassures our customers, it shows them that we are committed to the performance of our fleet and reliability of service.”

As well as maintaining performance, the whole package plays an important part in protecting the residual values of the plant, allowing Greyhound to benefit from increased revenue when it looks to upgrade its fleet.