REAL Answers Fleet View

B.T.I. trucks run year-round through rugged Wyoming countryside.

What works in the laboratory is often very different from what works in the real world. You just can’t control all the variables. Unless, of course, you’re Bonneville Transloaders, Inc. (B.T.I.) of Riverton, Wyoming. We visited with B.T.I. “professors” Clair Anderson, Roy Boespflug and Dave Witt, and learned how B.T.I. has turned one of the lowest margin types of hauling into a science—and a profitable business.What works in the laboratory is often very different from what works in the real world. You just can’t control all the variables. Unless, of course, you’re Bonneville Transloaders, Inc. (B.T.I.) of Riverton, Wyoming. We visited with B.T.I. “professors” Clair Anderson, Roy Boespflug and Dave Witt, and learned how B.T.I. has turned one of the lowest margin types of hauling into a science—and a profitable business.

Why is B.T.I sometimes compared to a “laboratory”? Clair Anderson, general transportation superintendent: “We haul commodities. Like soda ash, nitrate, molten sulfur and coal. And we haul the same loads over the same roads, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year-round. The equipment’s the same—our driving teams are the same. With the exception of the weather, very little changes. “So most of our variables are under tight control, much the way they’d be in a laboratory environment. If something changes, we know it.”
	But doesn’t it take a while to find out? “Actually, no. We log a huge number of miles each year. Our round trips through Riverton, from the mines to the railhead and back, average about 800 miles per unit per day, and we have pairs of trucks running 30 to 45 minutes apart. “We’ll put a quarter million miles on each of our power units in a single year. That’s more than twice the national average. So, you could say we get results more than twice as fast as the average fleet.”
Quick results, controlled conditions. Do you do a lot of testing? “We have to. Our business is very competitive, and to keep our edge, we have to know and control our costs to a fraction of a cent. “That makes us attractive for companies wanting to test things. Tires, for example, but lots of other components as well.”
What have you learned about tires? Dave Witt, tire manager: “We wear them out—fast. But that’s not surprising. We’re a very high-scrub operation, carrying very heavy loads in all kinds of weather, up and down grades as steep as 7 percent, on state roads that have somewhat rougher surfaces than interstates. “Still, we generally get around 65,000-70,000 miles from steers, and about 85,000 from drives. We pull both with about 7 to 8/32nds remaining, then move them back to trailers for another 3 to 4/32nds. We’ll get an additional 30,000-45,000 miles on trailer positions before retreading. “Most of our trailer tires, other than the ones we’ve moved back from tractors, are retreads, and we count on about 120,000-140,000 miles from those. We can usually get about three retreads per casing, so that helps keep our cost per mile down.”
How low is your tire cost per mile? “We’re proud of it. Given that we run very close to the legal weight limit for Wyoming roads, our tire cost per mile last year was only about 5.4 cents per mile. Since there are upwards of 30 or more tires on each unit, that works out to less than two-tenths of a cent per mile per tire.”
You calculate it very precisely. “As Clair said, we have to. That’s how we’ve kept making a profit over the years. We saw a variation of about a thousandth of a cent per mile between 1996 and 1997. If we had gone the same number of miles both years, at that rate, there would have been less than $5 difference in our total annual tire costs. That’s pretty tight control from one year to the next.”
Are there special things you do to make tires last? “We check air pressure regularly, and we cross-rotate tires to equalize wear patterns. We balance our steers, match circumference on retreads, true-up tires that have flat spots, and machine-refurbish our own aluminum wheels. We even install retreads with the tread splices 180 degrees apart.”

Isn’t that a lot of trouble?
“It might seem that way, but with our record keeping, we can determine whether or not it pays—to the fraction of the penny. We keep doing the things that work, and forget about the ones that don’t.”
Can you give us some examples? “
Sure. One is using hub-piloted wheels.
We find when we do cross-rotation, we can change hub-piloted wheels in about half the time it takes to do it with stud-piloted wheels. Because we figure labor costs as part of our tire cost per mile, that time savings helps. And, we have half the lug nuts to inventory.”

How do you keep records on all this?
Roy Boespflug, maintenance superintendent: “Right now, we’re doing part of it on paper, part of it on computer, but our goal is to start keeping all these records on computer as soon as we can. After all, that should reduce our costs a little bit more, and get us the information we need a bit faster.”

Are you as demanding with your other maintenance items? “
I’d say we are. Our equipment is our life-blood, and we treat our equipment the same on the first day on the job as on the last.”

Does that really pay?
“We believe it does. We sell our tractors after about a million miles. And we find there’s never a shortage of buyers who want our used equipment, even when they know it’s had a million miles of rough duty. “Buyers know that if it came from B.T.I., it was well cared for.”

How big a job is maintenance for you?
“About half of our 105 power units are at our Riverton facility. In brakes alone, last year, we replaced 1,600 sets of brake block and 300 drums. Heavy weight means high wear, so we’re constantly working on maintenance. “In our business, ‘the show must go on,’ and we can’t afford to have a lot of spare equipment around, so we have to keep what we have up and running all the time. “We run big engines, most of them 525-550 horsepower because of the loads and grades, and we even keep spare engines on hand to maintain uptime.”

What about appearance items?
“Appearance is very important to us. This is not a highly populated area, and we always run the same routes, so B.T.I.’s visibility is high. We need to look good and be good neighbors. “That’s another reason, I think, why our equipment resale value is so high and our drivers are so loyal.”

What do you mean by that?
“We keep everything the way it should be at all times. If we discover something that needs attention on any vehicle, we fix it, regardless of the age of the truck. Every vehicle that’s in service gets the same treatment.”

How loyal are B.T.I. drivers?
Clair Anderson: “Our driver turnover is generally less than 10 percent per year. And we don’t have trouble filling openings.”

That’s incredible! How do you account for it?
“Because we don’t travel long distances, every driver gets home every day. That makes driving much more like a ‘regular’ job, and makes family life much easier.

How does all that Improve driver retention? “Besides being home every day, drivers know what days they’re likely to be off—for the whole year—when I post the schedule on the first of January. “Assigning vehicles to teams gives the team a sense of pride and ownership, and believe me, they know those trucks so well that if even the slightest thing is wrong, we hear about it immediately. And, of course, that helps us keep the equipment in good repair.”

How many trucks are on the road at the same time?
“Quite a few. We schedule two trucks about every 30 to 45 minutes, starting them about one mile apart. That way, they’re close enough to stay in touch via CB radio (especially at night, when it can get pretty lonely out there), and can help each other with loading and unloading. “At any given time, we could have 50 or so trucks on the road.”

Do you ever stop?
“We have just one scheduled holiday, for Christmas. Though we’ll take other holidays if the workload allows us.”

Wyoming has rough winters. How often do they shut you down?
“So far this year, we’ve lost a couple of days. On average, we lose about six days to weather each year. But winter can be hard. We weighed one of our trucks once, and discovered that it was carrying an extra 10 tons—of ice. We’re working on a solution to that one.”

Our thanks to everyone at B.T.I for letting us visit their “laboratory” and learn how they use science to turn thin margins into real profits.