Crew of eight keeps 500 county vehicles up and running

Mechanics make sure equipment is humming along

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by REID SILVERMAN Jimmy Downs of Avenue works on the exhaust manifold of an unmarked police SUV at the county maintenance shop in California. Downs has worked at the shop for nine years. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Every vehicle owned by county government, whether it is a police cruiser, an STS bus, a bulldozer or a lawn-mowing tractor, is serviced at the vehicle shop at St. Andrew’s.

‘‘We do most everything,” Adams said, shop supervisor with the St. Mary’s County Department of Public Works and Transportation. He has been with the department for 38 years.

On a recent day, a Ford Expedition was in for an exhaust leak. A Chevy Lumina had a four-way flasher problem. An STS bus had an engine oil leak. Two other STS buses had air-conditioning problems. A mowing tractor also had air-conditioning issues.

With six mechanics, one fuel and grease man and one parts man, the crew handles a fleet of about 550 vehicles and equipment.

‘‘We have to keep an enormous amount of inventory” of parts and tires on site, said Jackie Fournier, transportation manager. Jimmy Gray keeps track of the materials. He said these days there are too many different sizes of tires to deal with for police cruisers and trucks.

An entire building is full of tires. ‘‘We’ve run out [of] what we got room for,” Adams said.

The shop itself is full of tools and hoses and even an anvil for welding work. It has heat, but no air conditioning. With all of the bay doors up and the ventilation system going, it doesn’t get too hot in there, Adams said.

Furthermore, the building is situated right with Mother Nature. ‘‘It’s always a constant flow of breeze through the building. That’s a very good thing,” he said.

And the crew gets started early in the morning, working from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. ‘‘We love those hours – the cool of the morning,” he said.

The temperatures in the winter aren’t a problem inside, but when snowstorms hit, the shop is running 24 hours, tending to vehicles that break down and fixing the blades that push snow off the road. ‘‘We don’t get a lot of sleep” when it’s snowing, Fournier said.

The shop is surrounded by vehicles. Three wrecked police cars sit on top of the hill where an old landfill was. Those are used for spare parts. ‘‘That saves the county money in the long run,” he said. Older police cars line the bottom of the hill, waiting to be stripped down for use for other county agencies. Some of those cars have more than 200,000 miles on them, but still run fine.

There are two or three STS buses that have more than 500,000 miles on them and are still in the active fleet. Six others have more than 400,000 miles. Adams said the key to keeping a vehicle going that long is good preventative maintenance.

‘‘We have a good workforce. We got a lot of nice equipment,” Adams said.

‘‘Tony’s very safety conscious,” Fournier said.

‘‘If it’s not safe, it’s not leaving here,” Adams said, ‘‘I don’t care how many guns he has,” referring to sheriff’s deputies.

An oil change and inspection for a police cruiser should only take a half hour, but if there is something major that needs to be fixed, the car stays and a loaner car is given to the deputy.