JCI Jones Chemicals Inc. Increases Payload and Productivity with PacLease Full-Service Lease Equipment
January 25, 2012
When your operation delivers millions of tons of hazardous chemicals for water treatment each year traveling through some of the most populous areas of the United States, you’re counting on your truck and trailer fleet to operate with few if any problems.
And that’s exactly what Tim Ross, the West Coast vice president of operations for JCI Jones Chemicals Inc. expects. It’s also what JCI’s customers expect.
“JCI Jones Chemicals is one of the oldest and largest repackagers of chemicals and chlorine in the United States,” Ross said. JCI, which has been in business for more than 80 years, manufactures and distributes chemicals - chlorine and related chemicals throughout the world from 11 state-of-the-art production facilities for water treatment. JCI’s chemical product is primarily delivered to public and private water treatment plants. The companywide fleet has more than 60 tractors and 300 trailers including advanced bulk liquid tankers, boom-mounted flatbed trailers, box vans and flatbed trailers. With oversight of the company’s West Coast operations, Ross is responsible for directing the distribution of chemicals, including thousands of tons of chlorine and approximately 70 million gallons of liquid bleach, produced at JCI’s two west coast facilities.
At the JCI Jones Chemicals production facilities, chlorine gas is mixed with sodium hydroxide and water to create liquid bleach for use in water treatment. This bleach is provided to countless water treatment facilities. Typically a gallon of bleach provides 1 part per million of chlorine to 60,000 gallons of water. While swimming pools are typically treated at a rate of 3 parts per million (PPM), drinking water is treated at a rate of from .2 to 3 PPM, depending on the level of contamination and the contact time.
To distribute products, the company’s West Coast Operations have been increasingly relying on PACCAR Leasing and local franchise Inland Kenworth-PacLease to provide trucks and trailers under full-service lease contracts. Ross and his counterparts at each of the company’s other operations are responsible for handling transportation. But the general strategy companywide is to lease equipment under a full-service contract or to have a vendor handle maintenance of their trucks.
“Leasing offers JCI Jones Chemicals Inc. the financial benefits such as the ability to plan on regular monthly payments and not have to deal with greater expenses as our trucks and trailers get older,” Ross said. “We don’t have to deal with the uncertainty of future residual values and we don’t have to set aside capital resources to finance the trucks and trailers.”
For nearly 40 years, JCI leased its equipment from another leasing provider, Ross said. But starting in 2009, PacLease presented JCI with a full-service lease proposal. The proposal called for the company to lease Kenworth T800s, some equipped with 425-hp Cummins ISM engines to be used in California at locations with more demanding delivery conditions, others with various powered Cummins ISX engines ranging from 350 to 450 horsepower. The trucks are also equipped with Kenworth Extended Day Cabs, 10-speed Eaton Fuller automated transmissions, a 12,000-pound taperleaf front-end air suspension, 38,000-pound rear-end air suspension and a superior engine-mounted compressor.
“PacLease presented us with a competitive lease package that included quality Kenworth trucks spec’d to provide our company greater productivity and with reliable remote maintenance service,” Ross said. Ross worked with JCI corporate staff on specifying the Kenworths with assistance from Inland Kenworth-PacLease to make sure the equipment suited the various locations nationwide.
“The engine-mounted compressors we chose are far superior to anything we’ve used in the past,” he added. “All of JCI bulk liquid chemical is off-loaded using compressed air, and the new engine-mounted 37 CFM compressors are outstanding. We have decreased off-load times by 20 minutes at many locations, a huge labor and fuel savings.
“PacLease helped in specifying a tractor that’s lighter, more comfortable, more durable and more reliable and can load and unload product faster,” he said. “Plus, since we’re getting Kenworth trucks, the equipment enhances JCI’s company’s image.”
JCI now leases more than 60 Kenworth T800 tractors nationwide from PacLease all equipped with PacTrac, powered by PeopleNet. PacTrac is an innovative telematics system available through PacLease, using GPS technology, a reliable network of more than 100 wireless carriers and an Internet connection to deliver real-time data from customers' vehicles.
The PacLease trucks based in Torrance, Calif., travel throughout the southern half of California from Torrance, north to San Luis Obispo, about 200 miles south of the Bay Area, into the Central Valley of California and south to the Mexico border. JCI also leases Kenworth sleeper tractors used for nationwide inter-plant distribution runs.
“Since the Kenworth T800 tractors are spec’d with weight-saving features, we’re able to achieve 5,120 gallons per load of bleach with many of the bulk liquid trailers. That’s an increase of nearly 5 percent compared to previous fleet tractors,” Ross said. “With JCI carrying millions of gallons per month this increased payload is substantial.”
But just as much as Ross appreciates the greater productivity and the quality of the equipment that PacLease provides, he also likes the maintenance service that PacLease and its franchises have arranged for his company. PacLease has established one person at Inland Kenworth-PacLease to act as the team leader to oversee maintenance on all of the trucks the company leases from PacLease in Southern California, plus some of JCI Jones Chemicals owned trucks under full-service maintenance contracts.
PacLease also provides the company remote maintenance service, so JCI Jones Chemicals delivery operation is unhindered by taking trucks out of service for long periods of time.
“Since we’re located in the Los Angeles area, it would take one of the Torrance drivers 45 minutes to drive from our facility to the Inland Kenworth facility and that’s if there’s no traffic,” Ross said. “We could easily lose a whole day of productivity and we just can’t afford to have that kind of down time. On site service saves the JCI Jones California facility thousands of dollars annually in labor costs alone.”
Because PacLease takes care of maintenance, Ross doesn’t worry about repairs and other maintenance issues becoming safety violations under the California BIT Program or the Federal Motor Carrier and Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program. That’s particularly important since as a hazmat carrier, JCI is under greater scrutiny under CSA provisions. Hazmat carriers like JCI are subject to 5 percent lower thresholds than general freight carriers for agency intervention in each of the seven CSA measurement categories.
“The folks at PacLease and Inland Kenworth-PacLease take very good care of us,” he said. “They do what they say they’re going to do. We’re very pleased with the trucks and the service PacLease offers.”