At the summer sales meeting in Virginia Beach, Karen Wright (Home Office), told the story of a friend who picked up a 5 gallon pail of 46 AW hydraulic oil at a farm store. The interesting thing about the story was Karen told him no no no, wrong decision! Then proceeded to explain how, the price is nice but fades quickly in the face of the cycle of destruction caused by cheap hydraulic oil. This reverses the way of thinking about hydraulic oil and is a great lesson to all of our customers on how a good idea, shopping for the lowest price, can backfire.
An Oregon farm agreed to test Schaeffer’s tractor hydraulic fluid (THF), Simplex Supreme, in their combines on the hottest day of the year. Two 2014 John Deere 9670s were used, and the machines had almost the same amount of hours on them. The temperature outside was 103 degrees, and both combines had been running for over eight hours when the test was conducted. To take the thermal images, the combines were unloaded and then shut off. The side panels on each machine were lifted, and pictures were taken on the side of the machines; the same procedure was used on both combines.
The combine using Simplex Supreme was tested first; thermal imaging showed a 29°F temperature difference for the combines. After seeing the results, the farm’s mechanics decided to switch their combines and excavators over to Simplex Supreme.
Logistics Supervisor Scott Schriber and Head Mechanic Curt Carver had been using Petro Canada in their fleet. When they saw the Schaeffer’s Oil demonstration by the local rep, they were impressed and decided to conduct a test.
Both Schaeffer’s 711 SynShield OTR Plus 10W-30 and Petro Canada’s engine oils were put in one older and one newer member of their fleet. They gauged wear metals, oxidation and other metrics through oil analysis. They found that both Schaeffer and Petro Canada performed comparably to 40,000 mile oil drains. Since Schaeffer was less expensive than Petro Canada, they decided to switch the entire fleet to Schaeffer’s.
One and a half years later, Curt and Scott say they are glad they did. They still change their oil at 40,000 miles and use oil analysis at 20,000, 30,000 and the 40,000 mile marks to prevent problems
from arising.
Each truck drives an average of 75,000 miles per year and most routes involve tough driving through the Oregon coastal mountain range.They found that one of their older trucks stopped burning oil after it started running Schaeffer’s. They also noticed about a one-half mile per gallon improvement in fuel economy after switching to Schaeffer’s, which represents a ten-percent improvement in fuel economy.
That’s an estimated $61,000 in savings annually.
Although Eric Martin, fleet manager of Boshart Trucking, has been very happy using Schaeffer’s
lubricants, he hadn’t tested to see if extended drain intervals were possible using Schaeffer’s SynShield® Durability Advantage 15W-40.
His Schaeffer reps, Chris Doyle and Mike Vandehey, convinced him to get on the oil analysis program. They believed Boshart could be going longer than the 10,000 mile change interval they were currently going using Cenex 15W-40 oil.
After several months of keeping close tabs on the oil analysis, Eric has safely increased his oil drain intervals to 30,000 miles with Schaeffer’s oil.
“The results of the oil analysis were all coming back clean, and we could probably increase the
change interval more, but I am very happy with the results,” he said.
Based on calculations, Eric says they have experienced a 47% savings in their lubrication
servicing alone.
“We have used less oil, there’s less downtime, and less shop time is spent on our trucks,” he said. “I jokingly told our reps we’re running out of used oil for our oil burner, and it’s coming
into winter.”
His Schaeffer’s reps helped him get used oil from another customer!
