Manager: Susan McCarthy
Title: Procurement administrator
Fleet: Clean Harbors Environmental Services, Norwell, MA
Operation: Hazardous waste disposal
PROBLEM
When you haul hazardous waste for a living, you can't afford to be delayed by something as simple as a flat tire. Yet that often became the case for Clean Harbors Environmental Services, one of North America's biggest environmental and hazardous waste management providers.
The company serves over 45,000 customers — from Fortune 500 companies to smaller private entities, plus numerous federal, state and local governmental agencies. It also handles a little bit of everything — from industrial hazmat and emergency response services to household hazmat collection needs.
The company's network and fleet is also quite large, with 4,500 pieces of equipment spread out among more than 100 locations in 36 states, six Canadian provinces, Mexico and Puerto Rico. And when you're responsible 24/7 for making sure that equipment is up and running across many different time zones, small problems can become huge headaches very quickly, says Susan McCarthy, Clean Harbors' procurement administrator.
“Flat tires were a horrendous problem,” she explains. “I'm on call 24/7 and I was constantly on the phone and our drivers would often be stranded for three hours or more, sometimes overnight due to flat tires. If our tire service didn't have a dealer location in the area, we were out of luck and on our own.”
After three years on the job, McCarthy knew she needed to make some changes. “I needed an emergency tire service program that offered convenience, fast response time and, most importantly, restful nights for me,” she says. “As the leading provider of environmental services and the largest hazardous waste disposal company in North America, we need to minimize downtime. We don't want to be on the side of the road when we're hauling hazardous waste for we have tight schedules to keep.”
SOLUTION
McCarthy solved her company's tire problems by going with a new service rolled out by Goodyear Tire & Rubber called fleetHQ, which is designed to provide roadside assistance, national tire pricing and centralized billing through local dealers.
“A core component of the program is the reduction of downtime through our emergency roadside service program. More than 1,500 dealers are ready with service 24/7,” explains Charlie Walters, gm for Goodyear's fleetHQ solution center.
“With that type of coverage, we can get our customers back up and running quickly — and we can help save them money in the process,” Walters adds. “There are no fees of any kind for calling our toll free number, and other emergency tire service programs have incidence fees ranging from $25 to more than $75. Plus, the price our customer pays for the replacement tire is the same price he pays at ‘home,’ with his local dealer providing the invoice.”
More than 11,000 fleets and owner-operators are enrolled in the fleetHQ program, which remains available to truck operators big and small, he notes.
Clean Harbor's McCarthy says the program's coverage is excellent, and tire prices are uniform and predetermined while company drivers are back on the road quickly.
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