Ryder System rolled out their new mobile maintenance system, Torque by Ryder to offer retail mobile maintenance at a fleet’s location without any long-term contracts and can handle both scheduled preventive maintenance and on-demand work. To better understand how this service will be setting a new precedent in the commercial vehicle mobile maintenance sector, Fleet Maintenance sat down with Torque by Ryder’s general manager, Jordan Wagner.
While Torque by Ryder can send out their technicians for roadside services, Wagner emphasized that one of the best ways to take advantage of the retail service is by making preventive maintenance work more accessible and efficient, especially since Torque by Ryder can remove the hassle of scheduling vehicle transport from a fleet’s lot to a shop and back.
Read more: Mobile fleet maintenance technician retention tips“The ideal situation for us is we partner with these fleets and have a schedule set up,” Wagner explained. That way, “we know that next week, we're going to be out for a day on your lot with the vehicles ready for us.”
These PMs and follow-up work can include handling DOT inspections, brake work, tire checks, lights work, and clutches, all of which Torque by Ryder can handle from their service vehicles. As long as Torque by Ryder knows what jobs they’re expected to do when they’re hired for transactional maintenance, they can come prepared with the parts and tools needed for the job, or have a parts runner come out to the customers location if need be, streamlining the PM process.
“In general, we're in and out within a few hours and your vehicle is ready to go,” Wagner said.
This kind of flexibility and accessibility gives both large and small fleets greater choice regarding how and when their maintenance gets done. Additionally, while many mobile maintenance operations tend to provide regional services, Torque by Ryder can provide a nationwide support network.
Because Torque by Ryder’s services are offered nationwide, it can provide a consistency that smaller operations might not, especially for customers that continually use the retail service. Even though Torque by Ryder does not require its customers to sign on to a service contract, they’ll still treat their customer vehicles as if they are by saving vehicle data to streamline future repairs.
“We are using our system to have a full maintenance history for the customer,” Wagner explained. This will then be accessible to the customer via a customer dashboard, where they can review the work that’s been done on each of their vehicles. “It's all saved in one spot for them with all their PM sheets and inspection sheets.”
While both Torque by Ryder and Ryder System provide nationwide services, and Torque by Ryder has the benefit of Ryder backing it up, the two are still fully separate entities. To Wagner’s view, this is another benefit, because this allows the retail mobile maintenance service to handle a broader gamut of vehicles based on their customers’ needs, from heavy-duty equipment to tractors and trailers, dump trucks, backhoes, light-duty vehicles, and electric vehicles.
However, to capitalize on this efficiency, it does help for fleets to plan ahead.
“The more vehicles we can service at once, the better it is for everybody,” Wagner noted. “It's just more cost effective to have multiple vehicles to touch.”
This is more cost-effective both a technician’s efficiency and the customer’s wallet. Generally, Wagner explained, the business aims to keep pricing simple by charging hourly for services and additional fees for parts. Then, there may be some travel fees depending on the scope of the work that a customer hires Torque by Ryder to do, too. But this is where it becomes even better for customers to hire Torque by Ryder for bulk work, as there are some variable price packages for bulk work.
“We have some bundled packages for different PM services depending on what the customer needs,” Wagner said. But even without the packaged pricing, “The larger the fleet, the more opportunity we can get to stay in one place all day, the better the pricing looks.”
