Officials in New York’s Nassau County are looking to reduce costs associated with the county’s aging vehicle fleet and plan to move toward a just-in-time system of parts delivery over the next three to six months, according to Richard Winter who heads the Office of Fleet Management.
“Our goal is to get a just-in-time contract up and running in the not to distant future,” Winter told Aftermarket Business. Any bid requests will have to be made public, he says. “It’s not something that can be done overnight.”
Winter directed us to the county’s press office for further questions, but he did say he has begun talking to some parts distributors about establishing supply contracts. The key will be to find a vendor that can support a wide variety of parts for all of the vehicles in the Nassau County fleet. The county has roughly 1,400 passenger cars and another 800-900 trucks. “As the fleet gets older it’s getting harder and harder to find parts,” he says.
Winter formerly oversaw fleet operations for the New York City Police Department and was brought in four months ago to clean up Nassau County’s fleet system.
“We had a just-in-time network at the NYPD that worked very well,” he says, referring to parts availability and better pricing as two main benefits.
According to a report in Newsday, County Executive Thomas Suozzi announced plans to reduce the number of fleet vehicles, institute a computerized system for oversight of vehicle inventory and develop a centralized repair system.
Suozzi said 75 percent of county passenger cars are beyond their useful lifecycle and half are more than five years too old. One major headache is the poor communication system that’s in place to monitor the parts that are available for repairs at the county’s 21 maintenance facilities.
For parts distributors who supply parts to Nassau County, these moves are significant. Fleet operations are migrating away from the control of individual departments and toward the Office of Fleet Management, which was established last year to get a handle on the county’s fleet problems.
