Lifting Safely, Supporting Strong: Heavy-Duty Tools for Trucking Industry

Episode 353: In this episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report, host Jamie Irvine speaks with Rick Hanna, Business Unit Leader at SureWerx, about the critical importance of safety when lifting and supporting commercial vehicles. Rick shares insights from recent shop visits where near misses highlighted the need for proper lifting practices, emphasizing the dangers of load shifts caused by fuel tanks and uneven weight distribution. 

The conversation also covers the importance of planning safety into every job, especially in smaller operations, and how SureWerx provides hands-on support, after-sales service, and product development driven by technician feedback. Rick concludes by underscoring that the ultimate goal is ensuring every technician goes home safely at the end of the day.

Links

·         SureWerx.com

Sponsors of this Episode

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Fullbay: Fullbay is built for the heavy-duty world, giving your operation the tools to keep your fleet or independent repair shop running. Features like streamlined scheduling, real-time inventory tracking, technician efficiency insights, and detailed reports are how Fullbay helps shops reduce downtime and keep your vehicles on the road where they belong. Check out Fullbay.com/power to maximize your shop’s productivity.

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Disclaimer: This content and description may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, The Heavy Duty Parts Report may receive a commission. 

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Transcript

Jamie Irvine

Welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, Jamie Irvine. And in this episode, we're going to talk about lifting and supporting commercial vehicles. We're also going to talk about lifting up and supporting the trucking industry. My guest today is Rick Hanna, Business Unit Leader, both for automotive and heavy-duty at SureWerx. Rick, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.

Rick Hanna

Thanks, Jamie. I'm really happy to be here and discuss some really important topics today. The reason I reached out is because in the last couple of weeks, I've been going through some shops and seeing some near misses. I thought it was something to be really important just to cover over the basics. A lot of people, our techs, they're professionals. They know this in the back of their mind, sometimes just gets in the rush, kind of gets pushed down. I thought this is a great opportunity to take this platform and make sure we're sending everybody home at the end of the day.

Jamie Irvine

Yeah, absolutely. As someone who owned a business where my employees were at risk of up to and including serious injury and death, it is something that is on your mind all the time. And you can never really talk about it too much. Keep it in people's, at the forefront of their minds. Before we get into all of that, though, Rick, maybe for those who are a little unfamiliar with your company, give us a bit of an overview of SureWerx presence in the heavy-duty market and what you guys do.

Rick Hanna

So SureWerx is sort of a parent company to a number of different brands. I believe in total now there are 27 brands that SureWerx owns, but there's only a small portfolio of those that we actually operate into the Canadian market. I believe it's about 16 of them. A number of those brands are in the safety portfolio where the Pioneer Clothing and protective wear, Jackson Safety, Celstrom Safety, NiPro. And then we also have our tool lines where we have the Jet tools, we have the ITC tooling, we have StarTech, and we also have our line of StrongArm, which is very well known in the heavy-duty business for our hydraulic lifting, shop presses, et cetera. There's a couple of other brands out there that we get into as well. SureWerx is a very safety-focused company. So ADA Solutions, and there's a couple of other companies which are tile companies for the visually impaired. So you may see that at the entrance of a curb, a transition into a roadway, where you see the tiles there and the bumps on the road. For somebody who's visually impaired, they know where they're at. So at SureWerx, we try and encompass all aspects of safety. And that's sort of a brief overview, very high level as to what we do, because then we get in to sub brands, et cetera. But that's sort of a brief high-level overview of who SureWerx is in Canada.

Jamie Irvine

Okay, so let me ask you something. When we are looking at lifting a commercial vehicle, I mean, it's one thing to lift a motorcycle, like I have a lift in my garage at home. It's another thing to jack up a car. I mean, that can be dangerous. But when you're talking about lifting a commercial truck or trailer, the stakes are extremely high. So let's talk about kind of the keys that we need to know when lifting a vehicle of that size.

Rick Hanna

So the first thing we need to know is how much am I lifting? Like, what is the weight that I have here? You know, and when you're talking commercial vehicles, whether the fuel tanks are full or empty, that can add an astronomical amount of weight to the vehicle. If it's a dump truck, what load is in there if any, you know, because a lot of times we don't get to pick when that truck breaks down. What's going on? If, you know, if my PTO is gone and I can't dump the load or I can't get the live bottom to get the load out and I'm in for repair, and I've got a wheel bearing that's gone, I've got any number of things that have happened, we don't get to pick when we service and what happens to that load. So the most important thing from the get-go is knowing what am I lifting and what do I need to lift that safely.

Jamie Irvine

Are there any misconceptions about that? Because that's interesting. I hadn't thought about the fuel tanks. I had definitely thought about the loads because I'd seen that before in shops, but I never considered the fuel in the tank. And you're absolutely right, that changes it. So are there any other misconceptions that come along with lifting a vehicle that we should clear up right now?

Rick Hanna

Yes. So one that I hear sort of in the medium-duty market a lot is, well, that's a five-ton truck. Why can't I use a five-ton jack? Or that's a one-ton truck, why can't I use a one ton jack? Well, an average one-ton truck was 14,000 pounds. So you've, you're over the capacity of one ton, like you've come and gone. And the thing with a five-ton truck is way over five tons. So that's one thing that we run into a lot. And it's usually not our professional mechanic, it's that guy that's peripherally looking and he's going to do a trailer light service or something, and somebody's asked him to do another function where they end up putting themselves in a dangerous situation.

Jamie Irvine

So, okay, let's talk about the professional shops, though. What is the risk to them when lifting? Like what happens where you've said you've seen near misses just in the last couple of weeks? Paint a picture for me of how that happened.

Rick Hanna

So a big thing is knowing what I'm lifting. So how much weight am I dealing with here? And the next thing, and the reason I talk about fuel, because a half empty fuel tank can almost be more dangerous than a full one.

Jamie Irvine

Okay, well, how does that work?

Rick Hanna

Load shift. You start to get the load up and you haven't blocked your wheel correctly, or you've taken the front wheels off and you're on stands and you start to lift the back. Now all of a sudden you've got 1100 liter tank or whatever it may be. And now that weight starts to shift. And so this is the standard practice is any one given lifting point or stand needs to be able to hold the entire load. So if you're using a safety stand and you're lifting 10 tons, the minimum for one individual stand of one individual jack is 10 tons. Because we can't tell where that's going to shift. If you've got a 50-ton truck because it's full of asphalt or it's full of gravel, how do we know when at what point in level gravel is going to start to move around in the back of that truck or a tanker? Yes, they have baffles, but if there's some load in the back of that, how do we know what level that load will start to flow and it can, if it's a liquid, it can flow slowly and then all of a sudden you thought you were going to put two five-ton weights and now you've got 7 tons on a five-ton stand. You're overloading that capacity.

Jamie Irvine

Lots to consider. Since safety is such a major concern for the industry and for the companies, whether they're a repair shop or a fleet, what is your company doing to ensure that everything you sell, you know, meets and exceeds the needs of these shops?

Rick Hanna

So what we conform to is the ANSI PALD standards. We don't have a standard in Canada for lifting, but we have a PALD ANSI standard, and we make sure that all of our product comes out. For one, it's clearly labeled. If you have stands in your shop, if you have a jack in your shop, if you get that new, I would encourage people, get a number, spray paint on the side, it's a five-ton. It's a six-ton. We all know what happens to that sticker on the top of the jack, grease, oil. But you need to clearly know what the capacity is of that stand. And you need to clearly know, hey, I'm removing the transmission from this truck. How much is that weight? How much of my load is now going to shift? Because I've got a transmission on an engine, on mounts, I just take the transmission off, is the engine going to tilt? Is my load going to shift? And then lately what we've seen is stands on the front. The transmission comes off the back of the engine. And a lot of times the rear mounts are a dual function of they're the front transmission mounts and the rear engine mount. And you take that load off and they're all on a rubber bushing. Now you've got a load shift. And I've seen where the load is shifted on the front and stands have either rolled over or you end up in a situation where that load shift has caused a danger to the guy who's under the truck. So I would say block your tires. Make sure that vehicle is not going anywhere and you can't rely on your brakes. You've got to make sure that you've got it properly blocked. Make sure you've accounted for how is that load going to shift, make sure I'm braced on that, especially on a cab-over situation where you got a lot of load on the front. If there's no bed on it, it's a pre-service or it's a roll-on, roll-off dump box, you've got to take into effect how that's going to shift, what's going to happen. And they're safely saying, you know, I've got 20 tons. My minimum is 20 tons, 20 tons, 20 tons, 20 tons. There is a use for lighter stands. For instance, I'm replacing springs. Well, I don't need 20 ton stands to hold my axles. So a six-ton stand will do. Gives you the height you need. You can lower those axles down, deal with your spring work, and then go back on safely. But know the capacity of what you're moving and make sure that you're working in a stable, safe environment. And also another thing to be aware is what is the angle of my floor because most shops have an angle, or they want allow water to drain. They don't want, you know, we deal with winter in Canada. Trucks come in covered in snow. You still got to take the transmission out. That fluid's coming out. And the other thing that we need to answer is what happens to that component on that wheel jack once it's free? Like if you're taking out a 2000-pound transmission onto a transmission jack that's on wheels, where is that going to want to go once you get that lowered down? So just be thinking about that and making sure I'm not the direction of travel that this is going to want to go in when I'm taking that last bolt out.

Jamie Irvine

So it sounds like your company has focused on making sure the products meet the standards needed, but then also a lot of education. And how does that work when you're working with so many different customers? So I mean, I've been in shops that are part of very large organizations and they have, a quite a healthy safety department that is on top of things and you can really see it in the shop. But then you go to smaller operations and they're independently owned, they don't have as many resources. So what have you been doing to work with those smaller operations to ensure that they're able to also operate safely.

Rick Hanna

So one of the things that we encourage is plan safety in your job. Because you don't bring a customer in to replace an air to air without having air to air there to go in. You don't bring a customer in to do a turbo job without having the oil, without having the gaskets, the tubes, whatever you may be, you've planned out that job. So when you get into a job where you're doing wheel seals, where you're doing work that's tire off, vehicle supported in the air, plan your safety as you plan your job. So look at, okay, I need to do this, this, this, and this in order to do the job I'm going to do. And you know that you have to lift the vehicle. You know that you have to support it, know your weight, know what you need to support it, make sure tires are blocked, and as the technician, because you're not going to try and put the new turbo in before you take the old one out. There's a step-by-step process that they know and it comes by nature. And we need technicians to start thinking safety as part of that protocol. Like what are the gloves I gotta wear? I need to protect my eyes. I need to protect my ears. I need to make sure the vehicle's not going to move. I need to make sure my load is supported, need to take into account if anything's going to shift. and have that in their process of how they do the job. So what we're trying to do is our professional technicians are very good at planning out the job, associated parts list, getting that all done. Our parts guys are really good at getting you what you need to do the job. We want to make sure as a part of that thought process, they are taking safety into account. What chemical am I dealing with? What oils am I dealing with? What do I need to protect me? And also, now we're getting into a grease situation, an oil situation. What kind of slip hazard is that going to put on the floor? Do I need a traction aid? Do I need something that's going to keep me safe while I'm doing this job and not cause any other accidents as well as when I'm moving, what I'm supporting, there's no slip, there's no shift, and I go home safe.

Jamie Irvine

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We're back from our break. Make sure you go and check out the links in our show notes to all of our sponsors. OK, let's get back to this episode.

Before the break, Rick, we were talking about planning out that job. And it seems to me like when you are probably at the most at risk as a technician is maybe in one of two scenarios. One, you're doing something unfamiliar, or two, you're doing something you've done 1000 times, you're kind of on autopilot and you're just not thinking it through. Would you agree that those are two of the kind of high-risk situations that technicians face?

Rick Hanna

100%, Jamie. I believe that the unknown is always a danger. The unknown as to what could happen, when is this, you know, you're unbolting a transmission for the first time, you’ve never done it. At what point in time is that going to let loose? And what is it going to do? And also, again, the job that you've done a hundred times, I've tracked this truck up, put it on a stand. And a lot of times what we find in that situation, they're so used to replacing the drums on the back of a trailer. So it's just like, it's habit, but we've stopped asking what's in the trailer. We stopped thinking like, like, is this something that's coming on an urgent repair? It's just on my work order. I don't have that information. Let's make sure there's nothing in that trailer. Because something as simple as a pallet jack in the back of a truck, and that starts sliding 53 feet to the front of the trailer, and you're there, and then all of a sudden you're doing something on a stand that maybe is not as stable as it could be, and boom, that hits on the other end, you've got a load shift, and I would agree with you, so it's always, have a process in place that you follow and make sure that you think of the unknowns. Because as you said before, that job you've never done before and ask yourself, what could happen.

Jamie Irvine

No, that's good advice, good advice. So people who are interested in buying your products, they've gone ahead and they've bought one of your products. What kind of like after sales support do you provide them? What kind of customer support are you giving customers who have invested in the safety products that you sell.

Rick Hanna

So one of the things that SureWerx is very proud of, especially through our Strongarm brand, is we carry the widest inventory of parts and after-sale service all across the country for our products. And we stand behind what we sell. We have a comprehensive warranty that is there, and if you need something that is outside of warranty, we have the parts. We recently rebuilt a jack for a customer that he had had for 20 years, 20-year-old jack brought it into us. And it wasn't really like, you know, I need this jack rebuilt. He got his life out of it. It was kind of the fact that we as a company and a brand of Strongarm can take a jack that's 20 years old and for a minimal cost, refurbish that jack and put it back into service for that customer for another 20 years. And that's just the length of strong arm. I mean, he had clean air, he had all the things he needed and he properly maintained it, but over time things wear out. And he came back in, we had the parts. We have a massive parts distribution center in Vancouver. And the other thing is we work with our customers on our warranty side. A lot of time a customer may need a small valve. He may need a small screw, a bolt, a label, a wheel. And it could be a warranty situation. They don't want to send it into a warranty center. The guy's like, I can do that myself. We'll send the parts right to you. We'll take care of you the way that you need. If you have the capacity and the capability, it's not complicated. We'll send that out to you right in your shop. We can Purolate that out to you almost overnight or next day service pretty much anywhere in Canada and get you going for the next day.

Jamie Irvine

Yeah, try doing that with some low cost, component that you bought that only lasts a year or two, and then it's basically heading to the trash bin, right? You're not going to get that 20 years of service. And this is something I've emphasized on this show over and over and over again. Make the investment in high quality parts and tools. In the long run, it doesn't cost you more money. It'll save you so much time, so much aggravation, and a lot of time and resource and money anyway. So sometimes it's hard to put that dollar out today, but it's going to pay back over and over and over again, year over year over year. So let me talk to you a little bit about the way that your company has gone to market. So how do people buy your product? Let's say I'm an owner operator or I'm a small fleet or I have an independent repair shop or I do mobile repair. I'm kind of in that category. How do I buy your products?

Rick Hanna

So we like to support our distribution network. We don't sell directly. We're a manufacturer. We partner with our distribution channels. And we have several distribution channels across the country that we partner with. Pretty much any distributor of heavy-duty truck parts out there has access to our portfolio. So we like to deal with people where they like to deal. So whether you're a Traction supporter, whether you're a Fort Gary, whether you're a Parts for Trucks, whether you go to an OE, if that's where you do business and you want to do business, ask them for our products and they are available.

Jamie Irvine

So let me talk to you a little bit also about the way that the company is approaching product development now and into the future. Any trends in the heavy-duty space that you're observing or that your company is kind of planning for?

Rick Hanna

So we're looking to expand our presence in the heavy-duty market. And one of the things we love is customer feedback on what they're facing, like we welcome that this has come out, this is new technology, this is what we're seeing. And we need a tool that does this. You know, recently, we are brought into development more items to deal with disc brakes. So that's going to be coming out in the future because disc brakes is a, it's not new, but it's newer technology. And as people are getting into service them more, they're finding different difficulties, different tools that would be helpful in doing that so our research and development we want it based on what the technician needs what how can we help them do their job faster how can we help them do their job better what am I using because oftentimes you go into a shop and you see that wrench and it's been cut and it's welded and then this other piece is onto it and he needed that to do a job well we want those prototypes. We want to know what it's for, how you use it, and how we can help you with getting those products to market. Because if one guy is finding that issue and he found a better way to do it, there's probably another 10 guys out there, another thousand, that could use the same tool. So we welcome that feedback from our R&D team, which is the everyday technician. They're the professionals facing this every day. And as much as an original equipment supplier can say, hey, this is the process, we've been around this business, our technicians, they often find a better way. They find a way to do it, a step that they can take that makes things a lot smoother. And that's where we like to base our feedback on and our market development.

Jamie Irvine

Yeah, so if you're listening right now and you want to give some of that feedback to SureWerx, talk to your distributor rep, whoever that is, or your dealer rep, let them know you want to have that conversation. They will be happy to connect you with a SureWerx representative and you can have that conversation. We were talking a moment ago about kind of making that investment in high quality product. So whether you're a distributor who's trying to figure out what inventory mix to have on the shelf to support your customers, or you are that end user customer and you're trying to make the right decisions, what kind of advice do you have for people when it comes to making an investment in something that is high-quality?

Rick Hanna

So what we like to do is we like to come into your shop and help you. We prefer a hands-on approach because you can go into a hundred different shops, and they focus and specialize in a hundred different ways. And you know, some people have a pit, some people will have a four post, some people use jacks and stands, and everybody, the way their go-to-market approach is a little bit different. Some people focus on trailer service, some people are engine service. And where we like to work with you is whether it's getting the right chain hoist on an I-beam to lift out components, you're working from underneath and we need the right air jack to help you lift up the end of the trailer, we like to come in, work with you right at the shop, and work with this shop that's setting up right from getting you the right stands, the right jack, the right hoist, the right capacities, up to workbenches, all the other components that go in there. And collectively, as you're setting up your shop, we find the right product to do the right job. Because what we run into all oftentimes is people are over buying on items that they don't need and under buying where they do need. For instance, you have a customer that, you know, they don't deal in axle service. Well, then having small stands is not something that is of use to you. Buying those six-ton stands is not something that's of great value to you. You need the 20-ton stands where you have another customer who's into spring suspension work all the time. Maybe you need three-ton stands, maybe you need other different capacity and buying a bunch of 20-ton stands, you've overspent on dollars you could invest somewhere else. So, we like to work with each one of our customers directly with through our distributor. And if you need that service, call us. We will get out to your shop, we will come in, we will assess with you what your needs are, what and plan out a roadmap for you to get where you need to be to make sure your safety angles are covered.

Jamie Irvine

Yeah, you know, as you were describing that, I'm picturing all the shops I've been over the years, and it actually made me think of a movie that I absolutely love called The Founder, and it's the story of McDonald's. And you know, the original two brothers that were really pioneering the system that later became what they called the speedy system and kind of revolutionized the McDonald's restaurant, they actually went to a tennis court and they like drew it out with chalk and they played around with the configuration of the kitchen until they got it where it was like just perfectly timed and people were moving and nobody was bumping into each other and they were increasing efficiency, you know, over time. And it makes me think of a shop like there is an optimal way with the situations you've got in your shop to design it so that it can be the most efficient, the most safe, you've got the right tools in the right spots, limiting the movement of technicians for unnecessary movement, maximizing the safety, right? Protecting everyone. There's a right way to do that. And I think that a lot of times what we all struggle with in our business is every day we're so busy just trying to keep up with the day-to-day needs that to take that time to really plan things out and make adjustments. Sometimes it's hard to find that time, but you've got to make that time because think about it, you bring in someone from SureWerx, you redesign your shop. Yes, that might take a little bit of time, but how is that going to impact the efficiency, the safety, the overall performance of the shop? You could, over a period of a few years, I mean, you could exponentially get return on investment of taking that time to work with professionals from people who do it every day, right? And that's the best thing is you can not only work with the people at SureWerx, but you can gain all of the information that they've collected from all of the shops that they work with across this country. So I think that's a great idea. I highly encourage you to do that if that's something that you have not yet done. And we'll give you contact information in a moment so you can make that happen. Let's conclude our conversation, Rick. We've talked about a lot of things today. If there's one thing you want people to remember from today's conversation, what's that one thing?

Rick Hanna

The most important thing about going to work in the morning, is going home to your family at the end of the day. Everything you do, there's no important, there's no sense getting the next job and there's no sense rushing the next thing in, pushing yourself too far. The most important thing is that you go home to your kids, you go home to your wife, go home to your husband, be home to your family, at the end of the day, after hard days, and you go home safely. And to me, that is the most important thing. And out of anything we say, just if we get people in that mindset, that I need to make sure that I go home to my family at the end of the day, that's the most important thing.

Jamie Irvine

Yeah, I definitely second that. You've been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, Jamie Irvine, and we've been speaking with Rick Hanna, Business Unit Leader for automotive and heavy-duty at SureWerx. To learn more about SureWerx, head over to surewerx.com. Links are in the show notes. Rick, thank you so much for being on The Heavy Duty Parts Report.

Rick Hanna

Thanks for having me, Jamie. Really appreciate it.

Jamie Irvine

And thank you for listening to this episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report. As always, I want to conclude with encouraging you to be heavy duty, and we'll just add today, be safe.