Since its founding in 1992, XTRA Lease has taken a progressive and proactive approach to solving customers' transportation problems. An integral part of that strategy has been maintaining solid partnerships, not just with customers, but with industry providers as well.
For many years, Thermo King has worked at the local branch level to assist XTRA Lease in providing the right temperature-control solutions for customers at many of the leasing company's 80 locations across the US and Canada.
For all of its 2008 refrigerated trailers, XTRA Lease chose Thermo King's recently enhanced remote status light and combination display to helps customers prevent the costly problem of out-of-fuel reefer situations.
With the display, drivers or operators need only glance from the driver's seat to verify reefer fuel levels and operating status, said XTRA Lease national sales manager, temperature controlled products, Dale Frank. “If they see the fuel level is low, they can shut down the reefer to avoid unscheduled service call-outs for priming or potential battery, alternator, or starter damage due to repeated start-up attempts without fuel.
“Quite simply, it is one little thing we can provide on our refrigerated trailers that can potentially save our customers expenses, and that means a lot, especially with today's challenging trucking environment.”
Reduced customer costs and improved productivity are also considerations when it comes to spec'ing refrigerated equipment, Frank noted.
XTRA Lease was an early adopter of Thermo King's electronic throttling valve option with the OptiSet temperature management system. The system allows customers to set predetermined temperature control requirements, said Frank, which makes a difference in fuel saving and offers faster pre-cooling.
Thermo King's willingness and ability to help solve and provide temperature control solutions, and supply local service and support, has been a great help to XTRA Lease, he said.
