Five years ago, Taylor, Mich.-based Atlas Trucking had a downtime problem.
Servicing a fleet of 71 trucks on the company’s dirt lot, and using shipping containers for workshops and parts storage, was a slow and sloppy process.
“When it rained, [Atlas Director of Safety Marc Scibilia] and his guys were on their backs in a mud puddle fixing lights on a trailer or crawling around under a tractor,” says Atlas’ Senior Director of Transportation Jeffery Bronson. “It had just gotten to the point that it wasn’t professional. It was dangerous.”
The private fleet for Eaton Steel Bar Co., soon leased a small shop space about 5 miles from the terminal “and started doing service with a roof over our head on our trucks,” Bronson says, adding local owner-operators and nearby fleets frustrated with the local truck service network then began to inquire about the carrier taking on their maintenance needs.
“When we went to outsource what we didn’t want to do in-house, it was a 3 or 4 week wait just to get it looked at,” Bronson says, “which in my world is totally unacceptable. It was actually getting to the point that I was leasing a couple tractors just to keep the company drivers creating revenue because I pay them whether they run or not.”
While Atlas graduated its maintenance department to a roughly 4,000 square-feet, four bay shop, it was offsite and not large enough to take on the level of outside repair work that Bronson believed potentially available. He had his eye on a piece of property closer to the trucking company that would allow the carrier to expand service capacity, and last May the trucking, logistics and now service provider closed on the 11 acre site.
