Heavy Equipment Blog

Ground engaging tools play a critical role in the overall productivity of earth moving equipment.  Operators who make G.E.T. a high priority in their daily inspections enjoy better productivity and fuel efficiency. When they couple attention to G.E.T. with high quality replacement parts purchased at a slice of list price, it makes for fewer headaches and, most importantly, fewer requests to open the company wallet.

At our Visalia sales and distribution center in the heart of California’s San Joaquin Valley, branch manager Tim Kernan heard several complaints from customers in all areas of heavy equipment regarding the weak selection of aftermarket G.E.T. For them, it had become difficult to determine the cost effectiveness of their maintenance programs due to excessively high list prices on items such as ripper shanks, cutting edges, end bits and other important wear parts.

Collaboration between Tim and our purchasing department resulted in a better inventory mix that marries well with the needs of Tim’s customers.  Our new stock is complete with dozer cutting edges & end bits, shanks & ripper tips, grader blades, bucket teeth and much more.

Sitting inside our Kansas City headquarters, the ACTParts machine shop is where all of our cylinder heads are loaded, components are rebuilt and transmissions are tested on the Dyno bench.  Its reputation in the heavy equipment industry is kept strong by 30+-year ACTParts veteran Jerry Duxbury.  He is vital to the processes described below that allow ACTParts to stock the industry’s finest remanufactured components, ready to ship to customers around the world.

Late last year we set up an Instagram account (@actparts) as part of an effort to engage with our social media followers more frequently and to help tell the day-to-day story of American Crane & Tractor Parts. As we move forward into the future as the industry's highest quality distributor of aftermarket heavy equipment parts for Caterpillar® and now Volvo® construction equipment, these pictures will provide followers with a lot of insight into our company values, the quality of our products and people, and, most importantly, if and when Dave Sellinger ever shaves his beard. 

The seven pictures below are great examples of what we set out to accomplish with our new Instagram account. We hope you enjoy scrolling through them and hope to see some of your comments!

1. Transmission Testing

Every rebuilt transmission undergoes vigorous testing on our Dyno bench overseen by our seasoned, factory trained mechanics and is backed by our 6-month warranty.  

An effective debt collection strategy can be the difference between success and failure for businesses selling parts for heavy equipment. In order to anticipate problems rather than going into crisis mode attempting to solve them later, sales representatives and AR professionals must work together so that debt collection practices are tailored to fit the nature of the business’ relationship with the debtor.

Understanding each of your customer’s businesses is critical to the effectiveness of your debt collection strategy. Approaching a lifelong customer who has hit difficult financial times the same way you would approach Bernie Madoff will have an adverse effect on your business. Because what happens when they dig themselves out of the hole and remember how you treated them when the chips were down? Or, in the worst case scenario, what happens when aggressive collection departments force them into bankruptcy and you lose both the customer and the receivable? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to work through the problem WITH that customer so that you can collect the debt AND keep them as a customer?

One way to take this approach is to make it as easy as possible for customers to make payments. By understanding the pros and cons of each payment method accepted, businesses can choose the best method of payment for a customer based on their situation. Consider the following chart:

Dealing with fraud is an unfortunately prevalent part of doing business in the aftermarket parts industry. How much it affects your business comes down to how well you are educated on the types of scams in the market and how well prepared you are to identify and stop potential losses from fraud. 

Here is a quick overview of some common scams and how we at ACTParts have been able to reduce our losses.

Stolen Credit Cards

Using information hacked from financial institutions, perpetrators are able to fool sales reps into thinking a sale is legitimate by providing a valid credit card number which authorizes for payment when entered. Once the real card holder disputes the transaction, the seller will be held liable for the total amount in addition to the cost of lost inventory. 

Ways to protect yourself:

• Sales reps should demand a faxed copy of both the front/back of the card as well as a government issued ID
• Credit managers should verify the legitimacy of the card’s use with the card issuer before any transaction is finalized

Winter can be a long and grueling time for contractors and fleet managers. Contractors have to dig in while business slows and working conditions become harsh. Fleet managers must deal with the arduous tasks of winterizing equipment and performing extensive inspections.

Managers who perform scheduled oil samplings, or S.O.S., at regular intervals throughout the year are in a great position to make the most efficient use of their winter downtime and avoid running into costly mechanical issues on job sites in the spring.The samples enable them to identify which machines have abnormal metal or contaminant levels in them and are more likely to require unscheduled maintenance when put back to work.

Shop managers and mechanics in our industry play a critical role of balancing efficiency with frugality. Everything they do will ultimately affect the company’s bottom line. And each minute the machines they work on are not in use the company loses money and productivity; putting tremendous pressure on them to get machines running as quickly as possible.

This pressure often leads fleet managers into making uneconomical purchasing decisions for the sake of convenience. Since the market for heavy equipment replacement parts has become saturated with manufacturers and distributors that run the gamut from inferior to OEM quality, buyers with no experience in the aftermarket are likely to have strong reservations about seeking out a new supplier.

However, these reservations will inevitably lead to missed opportunities for the business to save money without having a negative effect on productivity.

“We get a lot of customers who find us because they find themselves stuck in a situation where they can’t afford to go with OEM parts or can’t spare the manpower to do a rebuild,” says ACTP sales manager Dave Sellinger. “They’re thrilled when they find us because we offer them a filtered selection of only the best quality aftermarket parts and components so they can save money without having to worry about inferior products.”

Lowell Snow, ACTP’s resident mining expert with over 40 years of experience in heavy equipment, has said, “Managing a fleet of machines in mining requires a balancing act between time, cost, and quality.  Everyone from the equipment operators, mechanics, and purchasing managers have to work hand-in-hand with one another to anticipate problems that could lead to downtime.”

The three factors Lowell describes (time, cost, and quality) are all interconnected. Let’s take a closer look:

Time

Machine downtime on a mine site reduces productivity of the operation as a whole until the equipment is up and running again.  Whether it is planned maintenance or an unplanned breakdown, with the size and complexity of the equipment it can take days to perform even simple repairs. 

When a machine (i.e. a wheel loader) becomes inoperable, the operation will see a significant decrease in productivity (and revenue) until it is back scooping and loading product. Since revenue is being lost for every hour the machine is not operating, fleet managers must try to minimize the amount of time to fix the machine.