How Much Money Is Hiding in Your Service Trucks?
How Much Money Is Hiding in Your Service Trucks?
By Joe Crisara, Author of What Should We Do? and Co-Founder of Service MVP
If you don't have a controlled truck inventory system, you may have thousands of dollars tied up in parts you can't find, don't need, can't use or don't even know you own. Inventory problems don't just cost you the price of the part. They cost technician time, additional trips to the supply house, lost call capacity and sometimes a frustrated customer waiting for a repair that could have been completed on the first visit.
One of the simplest ways to see the problem is something I've been teaching contractors for more than 20 years: perform a truck autopsy. Open the doors, pull everything out and find out what's really hiding inside your service vehicles.
The Truck Autopsy I've Been Teaching for More Than 20 Years
Back in 2004, Julie and I had a company called Big Time Business Development Services.
One of the systems we created was called The Big Time Inventory System.
And one of my favorite exercises in it was something we called:
The truck autopsy.
It usually happened naturally when a technician quit or was terminated and somebody finally had to clean out the truck.
At first glance, the vehicle might look okay.
Then you start digging.
There's the motor everyone has been looking for.
And another one.
And another one.
Parts are opened but never used.
Boxes are crushed.
Inventory that was supposedly missing has been riding around town for months.
And then you find six, eight or ten of something the technician decided they should probably keep “just in case.”
Suddenly you're looking at hundreds—or potentially thousands—of dollars in company assets that weren't really being managed at all.
The truck wasn't just a vehicle. It had quietly become an uncontrolled warehouse on wheels.
And here's the uncomfortable part.
That's usually not the technician's fault.
It's a system problem.
Inventory Control Doesn't Mean Having More Parts
When contractors hear “inventory control,” they sometimes think the solution is to stock everything.
That's not control.
In the original system, we defined inventory broadly as the things a company repeatedly purchases to perform its work.
But the important word wasn't inventory.
It was control.
Control doesn't mean technicians grabbing whatever they think they might need.
It doesn't mean buying huge quantities because a vendor is running a special.
It doesn't mean waiting until you're completely out of something before anyone notices.
And it doesn't mean letting every technician decide independently what belongs on their truck.
Inventory control means intentionally deciding what you need, where it belongs, how much you need and how it gets replenished.
That's a system.
Your Technician Shouldn't Be Running Your Inventory System
Think about what happens without that system.
A technician uses a part.
Nobody records it.
The truck doesn't get properly replenished.
A few days later, the technician needs the same part.
It's not there.
Now what?
They drive to the supply house.
The customer waits.
The next call gets pushed back.
Dispatch starts moving the board around.
The CSR may have to call another customer.
And an inventory problem that started with one missing part has now affected several people across your company.
That's why I don't look at inventory as a warehouse issue.
Inventory is an operational issue.
A Supply-House Run Costs More Than Gas
Owners sometimes look at an unnecessary supply-house trip and think:
“Well, it's only 15 minutes away.”
Maybe.
But start counting the real cost.
There's the drive there.
The time spent finding or ordering the part.
The time waiting at the counter.
The drive back.
The technician's wages.
The vehicle expense.
The interruption to the service call.
The effect on the rest of the schedule.
And the customer who is sitting at home wondering why a professional service company didn't arrive prepared.
The cost of the part may be the least expensive part of the problem.
The Customer Experiences Your Inventory System Too
This is something that connects directly to what we talked about yesterday with Mike Bruner and the customer journey.
The homeowner doesn't know you have an inventory problem.
They only know what they experience.
Imagine two technicians.
The first diagnoses the problem and says:
“I have what I need right on my truck. If you'd like me to take care of this today, I can.”
The second diagnoses the same problem and says:
“I don't have that part. I need to run to the supply house.”
Those are two very different customer experiences.
A well-stocked, well-controlled truck allows your technician to deliver better service.
That's why inventory isn't separate from customer service.
It supports it.
More Inventory Isn't Necessarily Better
Here's where owners can overcorrect.
They discover technicians don't have what they need, so the answer becomes:
Put more stuff on the trucks.
Now we've created the opposite problem.
Instead of technicians leaving jobs because they don't have common parts, we have thousands of dollars sitting on trucks in inventory that may rarely be used.
Some gets damaged.
Some becomes obsolete.
Some disappears.
Some gets transferred between trucks without being recorded.
Some gets reordered because nobody knows the company already owns it.
The goal isn't maximum inventory. It's the right inventory.
Every Truck Should Have a Standard
If Technician A stocks their truck one way, Technician B stocks theirs another way and Technician C just grabs whatever looks useful from the warehouse, you don't have an inventory system.
You have three individual systems.
That's difficult to manage.
A better approach is to establish a standard truck inventory based on the work your company actually performs.
What are your most frequently used parts?
What quantities make sense?
What should always be available?
What needs to be replenished after use?
Who is responsible for replenishment?
How is usage recorded?
How frequently is the truck checked?
The system should answer those questions before the technician has to.
Your Warehouse Needs a System Too
You can organize every service truck perfectly and still have a mess if the warehouse isn't controlled.
Parts need designated locations.
Minimum and maximum quantities need to make sense.
Reordering needs ownership.
Technicians need a clear process for taking and returning inventory.
And somebody needs to be accountable for keeping the system working.
Otherwise, eventually the warehouse becomes exactly what the trucks used to be:
A bigger pile of things nobody can find.
Start With an Autopsy
If you're reading this thinking, “I have no idea what's actually on all of our trucks,” don't start by buying another piece of software.
Start by looking.
Pick a truck.
Open every compartment.
Pull everything out.
Sort it.
Count it.
Look for:
-
- Duplicate parts in unreasonable quantities
- Damaged or opened inventory
- Parts nobody remembers purchasing
- Parts that haven't been used in months
- Missing common parts
- Tools that don't belong there
- Parts technicians have been looking for somewhere else
- Inventory that can't be accounted for
Then ask a more important question:
What part of our system allowed this to happen?
Because simply cleaning the truck won't fix the problem.
Six months later, you'll be performing another autopsy.
Don't Blame People for a Process You Never Built
This may be the biggest lesson from the inventory system we created all those years ago.
It's easy for an owner to open a messy truck and get angry.
“How could somebody let it get like this?”
But ask yourself:
Did we establish the standard?
Did we train them on it?
And training isn't something you do once and assume will stick.
Did we give them a replenishment process?
Did we inspect what we expected?
Did we make someone accountable?
Did we create a system that made doing it correctly easier than doing it incorrectly?
If not, we trained them to operate without a system.
That's a leadership problem before it's a technician problem.
A Turn-Key Business Shouldn't Depend on Someone Remembering
I've spent most of my career teaching contractors how to create systems that people can actually execute.
Inventory is a perfect example.
You don't want the company to depend on your best technician remembering that you're almost out of capacitors.
You don't want Julie discovering that you're overstocked on a part when she sees the credit card bill.
You don't want a customer waiting while someone drives across town because the part that should have been on the truck wasn't there.
And you definitely don't want to discover what you own only when an employee leaves and you finally clean out their truck.
A turn-key inventory system makes the right thing happen by process instead of by accident.
How Much Money Is Hiding in Your Trucks?
Maybe the answer is very little.
That would be great.
But there's only one way to know.
Go perform an autopsy.
You may find missing parts.
You may find too many parts.
You may find damaged inventory.
You may find thousands of dollars that you didn't realize were sitting in your parking lot.
But the most valuable thing you'll probably discover isn't a part.
It's where your inventory system is breaking down.
And once you can see the problem, you can build a system to control it.
Want a Turn-Key System for Your Truck Inventory?
We took the inventory system we've taught contractors for decades and turned it into a step-by-step implementation guide designed specifically for home service companies.
The Turn-Key Home Service Truck Inventory System helps you establish truck inventory standards, create accountability and get control of the parts and supplies your team uses every day.
GET THE TURN-KEY INVENTORY SYSTEM
