Louisville Switching Blog

Have you seen the show "Undercover Boss?" Basically, the CEO or President of a large organization goes undercover and is disguised so employees don't recognize him or her. The undercover boss then gets to work side-by-side with the employees and is able to obtain great, honest feedback from the workers.

Recently Chris Troutt was in Georgia and was speaking to a driver who didn't know who Chris was. Chris wasn't wearing a company shirt, logos, or anything else that would identify him as being an employee at Louisville Switching.

Chris noticed the client had a newly-leased competitor brand yard truck. When Chris asked the driver what he thought about the competitor yard truck, he said, "I'd take an old Ottawa any day over this." It doesn't get any more honest than that.

No one knows the vehicles better than the drivers. They are the ones with thousands of hours of trailer spotting under their belts. When the drivers say they would rather have an old Ottawa yard truck over a brand new competitor yard truck, that confirms what we've always known. Ottawa yard trucks are the best yard truck in the business and they will always outperform, outlast, and be the standard for the industry. Ask the drivers, they know!

What do Sprinter Vans and yard trucks have in common? Louisville Switching is what they have in common. Recently, one of our clients approached us and asked if we would consider finding them a Sprinter Van. We were honored that they thought so highly of us and trusted us to locate and ready a Sprinter for them.

That's right, we may be the best at supplying the best yard truck in the business, the Ottawa, but we do so much more. One of the most common trailer repairs needed is the "gash." It happens all the time. A trailer backs into another trailer and tears a hole in the side wall. We repair that! 

We cut the damaged section out and patch it. It is perfectly riveted and sealed to keep mother nature out. Of course the interior is returned to a flat flush surface to insure maximum load widths. If you have any trailer repairs, we are your trailer repair experts. 

We can also modify your trailers for your specific needs. One of our clients recently asked us if we could weld the entire floor of a trailer for them. We said, "Of course we can!" We put in a steel floor so they could repeatedly load and off load steel racks that hold product for assembly lines. The steel racks had been damaging their trailers and with a new steel floor they could move the steel racks on and off without worrying about tearing a hole in the floor. 

With all the new diagnostic capabilities, we can diagnose your yard switcher in record time. Simply connecting our laptop loaded with Ottawa and Cummins technology, we can determine very quickly what is wrong and make the repair. Occasionally there will be error codes that will flash in your cab but they are easily forgotten or erased and without that code, there are lengthy processes mechanics have to go through manually to find out what is wrong.

A few weeks ago one of our mechanics, Kory Swenson, took one of our mobile repair vehicles to diagnose and repair an Ottawa Yard Truck for one of our clients. The trailer spotter didn't know what was wrong except that there was power failure. Without the computer diagnostics, it would have been a two hour turnaround to determine and repair the problem. 

Kory hooked up the laptop to the Ottawa Truck and determined quickly that there was a problem with the OEM. There is an Ottawa oil pressure send unit and a Cummins oil pressure sending unit. The diagnostic pinpointed that the fault was a Cummins oil sending unit. Kory said, "I saved hours of not having to read through the Cummins manual, having to go through every step to figure out what the problem was." 

He replaced the part, the symptom went inactive, and the yard truck experienced no power loss. Hours saved are dollars saved for our clients. We are dedicated to saving them time and money. Thank you Kory for a job well done!

We are always looking for ways to improve our service to our clients. One of the ways we have done that is by taking a close look at our mobile repair service for your yard switchers. By coming on-site with all the right tools and parts, we can get our clients up and running faster, and that always translates into savings. Here is how many of the other companies with "mobile repair" services approach on-site repair:

• Customer calls
• Over-the-phone diagnosis
• Put tools and a few parts in a pickup truck
• Come onsite and hope they diagnosed it right
• If they are missing parts they have to return to their shop or order parts
• If there are other on-site needs they have to be addressed on another visit

Here is how we handle on-site repair for your spotter truck:

• Customer calls
• We dispatch our mobile repair vehicle 
• Our Cummins-certified, Ottawa-certified technician diagnoses the problem
• Our mobile repair vehicles are full of inventory parts and tools
• If other trucks need servicing we are fully prepared with tools and parts

We believe we should be prepared to service your entire fleet of yard switchers. It is very rare that we do not have the necessary part for your repair. We can not remember a time when we didn't have the right tool for the job because we do not "borrow" tools from the shop for our on-site servicing. The mobile repair vehicles are fully stocked with every tool that could ever be needed and then some. 

You may remember us mentioning last month about our oil recovery systems on our mobile repair trucks. Well, when we pull our impressive mobile repair vehicles on-site, we often have the all the spotters line up their switcher trucks and get all minor and major problems addressed the same day. Our technicians are that good. So when it comes to who you choose to service your yard trucks on-site, think about who will get you up and running quickly, more often. That is Louisville Switching's commitment to all of our clients.

We love it when we get feedback from our clients. Most of our clients have the same reaction when our mobile repair vehicles show up on site and are able to fix most of the issues without having to leave to get a tool or part. Our vehicles are stocked with inventory parts for Ottawa and Cummins so there is rarely a time we have to call in "special" orders. The clients are thrilled. They are also blown away by the dedication of our repair team. 

One of our repair teams was on a recent job and was working on an  Ottawa Yard Truck . He was diagnosing and repairing the yard switcher while mother nature was dishing out a torrential downpour. Our client watched as our repair man worked methodically to repair the spotter truck while he was getting soaked head to toe. Our client was so impressed, he snapped a photo of our guy in the middle of the rain while he worked to get the truck up and running.

We know that downtime for our clients is money lost. It is always our objective to get you operational as fast as possible, and sometimes that means we get a little wet. Okay, maybe more than a little wet, but that is how we treat all our clients. We strive to go above and beyond your expectations. If you have photos of our guys working on your yard trucks, send them in. We'd love to post them on our Facebook page because we always love taking time to brag on our team. Thanks for letting us serve you.