Ep. #24: The Importance of Snow Removal from Your Truck Fleet

This episode of Right from the Source features Who's a business manager with Harbon and the U.S.? He discusses how the automated routine is listening to right from the source. Expert insights on Productivity, energy system. and environmental control. Inside your industrial or commercial facility.

Welcome listeners. This is right from the source, and with us today we have Jeff Johnston. Hi, Jeff. Hi, Ken. How are you today? I'm doing well. How about yourself? Doing well. Awesome. So we've got a fun topic today that's pretty new to Right Hype, but before we dive into that, First let's give our listeners a snapshot of of who you are. What's your title, Jeff, and uh how long have you been in the industry? So my current title is business manager and I manage

The allied products that Arbon sells. And what allied means is it's products not manufactured by Reite Height. People we partner with and sell those products through our Been in this position for approximately five years and I've been in the industry for twenty six years now. So uh seems longer every time I say it. Well, certainly an industry veteran. Any hobbies or passions outside of work that you want to share with the listeners? Well, I have four children.

So uh my hobbies have definitely uh I found them shift over the years to doing things like instead of playing sports, coaching sports. Primarily baseball is where I spend most of my time coaching and get a lot of enjoyment out of that. When I'm not doing that types of stuff, I like to find myself outdoors, either fishing, hunting, camping, things like that.

So let's dive into the topic that we're all here to listen about. uh which is uh scraper systems specifically, but then also just the the removal of snow from potentially dangerous snow from the roofs of uh trucks and buses. So for our first question here, can you explain the importance of having an automated system in place to remove this snow from the from fleets of trucks and buses that are traveling the roads?

Absolutely. But I'm gonna just take it a step back. Any of our listeners who have spent any time driving in a snowbelt have at some point probably found themselves behind a car. A car driving down the road in front of them that the person didn't properly clean.

As you're nodding your head, I can see you you know the car I mean. The car that the windows are clear, but the trunk still has snow on it, the hood does, the top of the the car does. And as you're following behind it, it's a little annoying as the snow flies back in. With trust.

All of a sudden we're taking that snow and we're ten feet higher in the air. And instead of snow from a three foot by three foot area, that snow can be coming from a eight foot by fifty foot area. So what was a little annoyance can become downright down. And that's one of the real struggles for the trucking industry. They always looked at snow removal from the trucks as something that they know they should be doing because it's dangerous once the truck gets on the road.

But they also looked at the snow removal process as being dangerous.

So trying to come up with a more automated system is just kinda natural progression. Um I've seen people use forklifts that have big pallets. where they raise the pallet up and then have the truck drive underneath it. I've seen scenarios at trucking companies where they've taken a trailer that was no longer roadworthy. Cut the top off of it, put scaffolding on the inside, and they had workers lined up inside there with rakes trying to rake the snow.

So now all of a sudden you mix all these extra steps and processes while having employees at risk doing them, and now you're late on your delivery. I'm thinking about just the the struggle of cleaning the roof of a a C R V that I own and it's like I gotta get up on my tippy toes with my scraper. I can't imagine something as as tall as some of these semi trailers that are going down the road.

Does that affect even something like fuel costs? I mean I gotta imagine that there's like quite a bit of drag and weighing down even on the on the truck itself. You gotta look at that. This is an industry that spends thousands of dollars on trucks. To save a 1% gain. To get a 1% gain to these trucking companies that put on millions of miles a year, that ends up being real dollars in their pocket at the end of the year.

and the amount of load that you're pulling down a road absolutely has an impact. If you have a three inches of powdery snow, that's not that big of a But if you get six inches of heavier, wetter snow all of a sudden you're looking at something that can easily be six thousand pounds on a truck. And when you start getting to that kind of number, you're looking at things that could be a two percent.

decrease in fuel economy, you make that all of a sudden ten inches of snow up there. Now all of a sudden you might be close to a three percent, maybe a four percent decline in fuel economy. They're spending money to save gas mileage and when they don't take the snow off, they're affecting it as well.

So let's talk a little bit about a solution, the automated scraping system here that can remove that snow quickly and efficiently. Specifically I know that uh scraper systems makes uh fleet plows. So what What's kind of different about this system? How does it work? You have trailers that are of varying height.

13.6 is the max you're supposed to have on the road on eastern United States. However, depending upon the amount of load in that truck, whether that truck is empty or full will depend where the roof of that trailer is. So that's a moving target. Cleaning snow off of a trailer is also a moving target because there's snow underneath that truck as well.

So you have two things that can be varying the height of a vehicle. That's really where scraper's benefit comes in, is that the height is adjustable on the unit. The plow comes down to the truck. and is in the right position every time as the truck drives through. So that the plow being at the right height makes all the difference.

If you don't have it at the right spot, you're going to be leaving snow, possibly ice on the trailer. If you're too low, you could possibly damage the trailer. The adjustability is the key on scraper systems. How does uh something like the fleet plow from Scraper Systems remove that snow without the bad side effect really of damaging the roof of a trailer? A big part of it has to do with the design of the the plow blade itself.

the height of the blade, the curvature of the blade, the balance of the blade and where the weight falls onto the truck. The blade itself doesn't touch the truck. It's actually a rubber sweeper that touches the truck and the amount of force that is released onto the truck. When we lower the blade onto the truck, all of that weight is not necessarily on the truck. So it's a balanced application of the weight across the top of the truck as well as a blade design that clears the snow.

Instead of just pushing the snow sliding it back. So that snow starts sliding down the way. Well, as it does it, it's putting bigger and bigger loads into the plow. So if the blade design isn't right and the snow isn't being shed from the top, All of a sudden you can really do some damage. So it's blade design, the balance of the blade and the weight how the weights applied.

As we talk about some of these snowbelt states, whether you're talking about the Midwest or you know the the Northeast for you know for certain, which is where Scraper Systems is originally uh from and w and we'll get into that in in a in a minute. But a a lot of these states are starting to have different regulations and and stricter regulations on different vehicles specifically trucks, trailers, buses, um as it relates.

to snow accumulation on the top of these vehicles. How does something like that affect the the business of automated snow removal and and how does scraper systems kind of fit into that? Even before the specific laws were in place, states had ways that they could find drivers for unsafe situations. So there's always motivation legally to do it. There have been several cases in different states of uh w what the media like to call ice missiles. Um

W why the snow gets so dangerous on top of a trailer is a trailer gets backed up to a building. Most of these buildings are heated. The doors of the trailer are open, the doors of the building are open as they load and unload these trucks. So the inside of that trailer warms up. So on top of the trailer, that snow that's right there starts to melt. Then, once the truck is all loaded up, the truck pulls away from the building, may sit in a yard for a little bit before a driver picks it up.

All of a sudden water that had formed from the melted snow becomes ice. You don't have to do much searching on YouTube to find trucks driving around where you can see the sheet of ice and snow sliding back and forth. That's what makes it really dangerous. So now all of a sudden it's not powdery fun snow that you play in as a kid. It's all of a sudden that hard ice ball that the bully made and threw at you coming off of a semi-trail.

States like Connecticut, where some of the strictest laws have been uh uh enforced, those ICE missiles have broken windshields. So it's created situations that are really, really dangerous. Some of our biggest customers aren't buying because of the laws. They're buying because they're saying we don't want trucks out there with our name on it having things like that occur.

We're we're definitely seeing more and more states have laws. Primarily the Northeast is where a lot of those laws are coming from. We're seeing even more states. have laws on the books, bills that haven't been voted on yet. We're seeing a lot of that here in the Midwest. But we're seeing more and more of our customers, if they're going to put a system in place, they're looking at doing it everywhere, not just in one place.

Do those laws have an impact on that? Have those laws had an impact on it? Absolutely. Without a doubt, the laws have had some impact. And a big reason for that is the violations themselves, the dollar amount. while not super strict are strict. And while not super costly, they are still costly. Fifteen hundred dollars is fifteen hundred dollars, which is

De defined for a second offense, I believe, right now in Connecticut. But what's worse, or or where these trucking companies are affected the most. is as those violations compile, for a trucking company if they get multiple fines, where it can affect them is it can affect something called their CSA And these CSA scores are something that all trucking companies are rated on. And what CSA stands for is compliance, safety, and accountability. As large companies hire trucking companies,

They want to hire companies that have a very low CSA rating. This can impact your business, not just for that year, but for the next year. So it's something that they take a good interest in. I've mentioned Snow Belt a couple times. I can tell you that some of our biggest buyers of our product are actually located below the Snow Belt because of trucks that they have up in the Snow Belt area.

Um it's very interesting selling a product to someone down in Georgia for removing snow up in New York. It's just a a complication or a problem that they've just never had to deal with before.

So I would love to hear a little bit more about uh Scraper Systems, which is a uh the company that Right Height recently acquired. So Tell me a a little bit about its roots and how Right Hike got involved with them. Scraper began in ninety-seven. It was a terminal manager for a trucking fleet who saw the need to remove snow. And instead of having a fixed plow, he understood the need to have something that moved up and down.

He was actually with Yellow Freight, is the company that that gentleman was with. And he started it in ninety-seven. It was actually acquired by the people that. Uh we started to work with that scraper in two thousand eleven. And it was acquired by two entrepreneurs. took over the product line, did a little further engineering, a little more work into that uh blade design, a little bit more work into how the unit operated to make it a little more customer friendly.

And we got involved with them in 2015. Our network, our the Right Height Distribution Network, had started selling the product. The product was very well received by our customer base. When a customer buys a product from you, you want that product. to be a solution. You don't want it to become a maintenance headache or a problem.

And when we sold scrapers to customers, it did what it was supposed to when it was supposed to, was reliable, and just became a really good product for our salespeople to solve problems for their customers. In 2015 is when we started, and over five years the acceptance of the product really grew with our customer base. Uh we mentioned I mentioned earlier that this was a need that people saw. And it was just a matter of finding a good, easy solution for.

No, I I I love the the story too and and how it does kinda mirror right heights in a way as far as you've you've got a product, you see a a a need for a product. and you have that original design that maybe is really good and maybe an industry leader at first, but it they didn't stop there. They they kept They kept advancing it, kept finding ways to improve it. That that's really cool.

S some of the other stuff that Scraper had done is they saw the need for trucks smaller than semis. Not just the distribution center that had two hundred trucks a day needed this solution. They realized that Someone that had twenty trucks leaving a day could benefit from this solution. And they came up with more cost-effective models that would work for customers in those situations. The other thing that they came up with that has really changed customer acceptance.

Many of Scraper's models are available as portable options, which allows a customer to buy something without saying, is this spot going to be good in five years? Or is it good right now for this winter? And next winter if we need to move it, how difficult would it be to move? And that's something that a lot of our customers really like. Taking that piece of it out of the equation, thinking about where it needs to be in two years, five years, ten years, makes it a little bit easier.

portable power options to go with the portability of the unit. What good is the portable unit if you still have to have permanent power brought into different locations? A lot of times snow and snow removal needs Don't really become front and center until the ground is frozen three feet deep. And if you had to trench power, it would be expensive, timely, and just create other headaches. where we have these portable power options for scraper systems that have a generator built right on the unit.

and you don't have to worry about putting power to it. If you decide to at a later date, it's all wired and ready to go for that. But you don't have to do that immediately. Some customers say, well, the portable power option doesn't work for us. We don't want gasoline on site. We understand that. The nice thing about the unit is if you do just have to use regular power, it's 110 power.

So some customers use an extension cord for a little bit. There's other units out there that require 480 three phase. And if we're talking about running that out to different areas of parking lot. I just had a customer tell me that the price difference in the electrical install was over fifteen thousand dollars.

to run a one ten or to run their four eighty. So that's a that's a very, very significant difference. Yeah. And that might be a one off situation. It's not something I've priced or looked at around the country.

What kinds of customers does scraper systems have? Like who should be considering this type of automated snow removal? If you have trucks on the road and you're worried about your company name, if you're worried about putting other drivers at risk. You should have this product. If you have packages delivered to your house.

You can pretty much bet that any of those companies that are delivering packages to your house are doing things to remove snow from their trucks. They recognize that this is a risk and they're doing Those are all companies that use their vehicles as moving buildings. So with that moving billboard, it doesn't go very well if you've got

Ice missiles landing on vehicles. Uh is there anything that uh we missed about um either scraper systems or automated snow removal, Jeff, that uh you did want to touch on and make sure that our listeners knew about?

There's different levels of automation in these systems. Different customers approach things different ways. We have some customers that will have An operator, and when I say an operator, that's an employee that is out there that actually presses the button to adjust the height of the of the plug. The next step of automation is someone just presses a button and the plow lowers itself to the correct position. That's taken by more and more customers.

With the one-tap system, which is what most customers end up going with, it's just you hit a button, it lowers itself, you drive through, and you hit the button again when the next truck comes in. What's nice about that system is if there's a little bit of snow buildup underneath, it still goes down to the right elevation. If there's no snow underneath, it goes down to the right.

One of the biggest questions we get from customers when they're putting this system in is how often do I need to clear the path where the truck is? Mm-hmm. Because the snow that's on top of the truck comes off the truck. Yeah. Some of it goes to the left, some of it goes to the right. That's why we have the V plough, but without a doubt, some of it does fall at the back of the truck.

And how often you need to clean that lane out depends on the type of snowfall. Heavy, wet snows are going to need to be cleaned out more than light fluffy snows. So most people have a snow contractor on site with either a bobcat or a plow truck, and they actually will clear that lane based on the snowfall. And the adjustment of the trucks, if it's a situation where you've got a lot of delivery trucks. going in and out and they're all the same delivery truck.

There are times where we can set that system up where you adjust for one truck and instead of using the rubber brush. We actually use nylon bristles on the end so we can get away with having a little more flexibility of where that plow is and still provide a good clean top for the truck. A lot of those delivery trucks that are out there.

have GPS sensors and different antennas on the roof. So we had to come up with a way to accommodate things that they needed for technology and still be able to keep those trucks. Sounds like a very diverse set of product lines and uh and really just about any kind of possible thing that you would ever want in an automated snow removal. Being in operation since ninety seven, they've seen a lot of things.

At the top of trucks. Being in the dock industry and being in the material handling industry for as many years as I had been, I didn't realize just how different all the trucks are that are on the road. If there's a vehicle out there that needs to have snow removed, Scraper has probably tackled it. Well, we'll save some of those other vehicles for a future podcast, perhaps. But no, we appreciate your time here today, Jeff. I think we've covered everything that we've needed to.

So uh certainly an an expert on fleet plows and scraper systems and An exciting new venture here for Right Height moving forward. So to our listeners, be sure to follow Right Height on all social media platforms and visit right com for additional information or to connect with a team member. Jeff, thanks again for your time. Thank you, Ken. If you enjoyed this episode of Write from the Source, be sure to subscribe on your preferred listing program.

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