If good old Ben was writing today, he might well have updated
his famous quote to “a dollar saved is a dollar earned”, and applied it to the importance of construction equipment owners
and operators taking advantage of Monroe Tractor’s off-season maintenance program.
Steve Carozza of Bedford Paving in Rochester, NY, was quick to come to the same conclusion recently when discussing his company’s participation in the program. “It’s a win-win for both my company and Monroe Tractor,” he said. “It not only makes sense to get equipment into the shop when it’s not being
used (during the winter months for his pavers) and when their shop is a little slower, it also saves us money because they give us a lower hourly rate,” he explained. That can mean saving a lot more than a dollar, too.
“The off-season program starts when the asphalt plants shut down in November,” according to Keith Hagenbuch, MT’s Henrietta branch product support manager. He points out that the program is designed to take advantage of seasonal down times that the contractors experience. Understandably, 95 percent of the off-season maintenance centers on pavers.
Manny Gianuzzi, G & G Seal Coating, Webster, NY, has been working with Monroe Tractor for several years and “they do all the maintenance on my Leeboy 8500 paver,” he said. “While the 8500 is at Monroe Tractor’s off-season maintenance
program, they pretty much go through it from one end to the other . . . evaluating screeds, conveyors and augers, often finding things I might not otherwise be aware of that, had they broken down on the job, I’d have been loosing business every hour or day it was out of service.”
That’s more than just “piece of mind,” Gianuzzi and Carozza
agree. It eliminates potential headaches as the spring season
gets rolling, even before they take on their first loads of asphalt.
Jerry Kusminsky, Pittsford Paving, Inc., Henrietta, has been in business for more than 30 years and has a mechanic on staff. “But,” he notes “they (Monroe Tractor) can do things that we cannot do in our own shop, things like testing hydraulic pressures
and checking for warn hoses, for example.”
Carozza has been working with Monroe Tractor since 2001. Last winter he put his LeeBoy 7000 into the off-season maintenance program. “I wasn’t going to need it until spring so I could let them go through it when it fit their schedule. Usually,
Bob (McKay, MT service manager,) gives me a laundry list of problems and then works to help me decide what has to be done and when. For example, if a bushing is a little sloppy, he might tell me that I can get another half-season out of it, if I want to. That helps me stretch my maintenance dollars.”
Kusminsky amplified the value of a Monroe Tractor’s laundry
list. “Two things,” he said. “When you have equipment in the off-season program, you have time to get the work done, and you know they’re honest and straight-up over there. They won’t tell you things need to be done just to sell you something.”
While Bedford Paving’s Leeboy was in the shop last winter, McKay’s guys found problems with the paver’s screed. Had the problems not been discovered until the early days of spring, “it could have been down for maintenance for more than a week,” said Carozza.
Now it’s easy to see how Monroe Tractor’s off-season maintenance program and Ben Franklin and Poor Richard’s Almanac got into this story together isn’t it?
If a dollar saved is a dollar earned, how many dollars do you want to earn?
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