I’m always stunned by how much after treatment service costs. The numbers are truly astounding.
Back in January when the topic came up at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Dialogue, Lee Long with Southeastern Freight Lines confessed that his fleet “spent $1 million just on [diesel particulate filters] alone” in 2016. Swift’s Gloria Pliler didn’t report any numbers, but speaking on behalf of one of the most proactive maintenance fleets in North America, Pliler said her employer is outsourcing DPF maintenance because of cost and time associated with making so many emission system repairs.
The numbers weren’t any better at the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) meeting in February. In releasing a new line of DPFs and diesel oxidation catalysts, Denso’s Frank Jenkins reported industry research shows after treatment system maintenance—a category that didn’t exist before 2007—will trail only tires as the largest cost associated with fleet maintenance by the end of the decade.
Can you imagine what that must be like for fleets? A technology they had no control over was forcefully implemented into their operations, and in just a decade has become so thoroughly and exhaustively expensive that it has surpassed nearly every other cost in their business. And those other costs didn’t go away, either. They still need to maintain their wheel ends and electrical systems and air lines and engine and everything else that makes a truck go, while also finding the funds for a gargantuan expense they never asked for and are struggling to control.
That does not sound fun.
The good—or the least bad thing, considering the circumstances—for fleets, is that costs in other areas have been much less volatile.
The early years of after treatment corresponded to the worst years of our recent recession. Not every fleet made it out alive. But those who did survived by optimizing their service and maintenance schedules for everything else, and developing a strategy that allowed them to budget for uncertainty in one area by stabilizing others.
