The number of buses using Voith Turbo’s unique new health check scheme in the UK has almost doubled in only five months.
More than 1,100 buses are now receiving regular checks on their automatic transmissions compared with 600 buses last October.
A total of 25 depots throughout the country have signed up to the scheme compared to only two depots 18 months ago.
“Bus operators are increasingly recognising that they can save thousands of pounds a year using our health checks,” said John Domigan, Voith Turbo’s Sales and Marketing Manager (pictured).
“One depot has cut gearbox costs by as much as 68% and other operators are also reporting dramatic savings.”
John says Voith Turbo has recently employed three extra regional service engineers to the respond to the needs of bus operators.
“The UK bus market is moving away from the traditional ‘fix on fail’ policy to a ‘fix before failure’ culture,” he said.
“We have found that if we can anticipate the failure of a gearbox and repair it in the field we can save significant sums of money by avoiding the need for a replacement transmission.
“One depot reported that across their fleet of 50 buses they had saved 6% on gearbox maintenance costs in nine months – and that figure didn’t include associated costs such as downtime and the cost of towing broken-down vehicles to the depot.”
The health check scheme – the first of its kind in the UK bus industry – uses new software that can accurately predict potential transmission failures. They can now be avoided by introducing timely gearbox maintenance programmes.
The rapid take-up of the scheme comes at a time when Voith Turbo is increasing its presence in the UK market. Last year was the company’s most successful with sales of DIWA transmissions doubling in the last five years.
