Your Equipment Looks Terrible

Okay, maybe your equipment doesn’t look terrible, but I was travelling on I-40 yesterday between Oklahoma City and Hinton, and I decided to start counting the number of pieces of oilfield equipment that looked like they hadn’t received any attention since they’d entered the field. I eventually had to change my strategy (there were just too many!) and count the pieces of equipment that actually looked fairly well maintained and kept reasonably clean.

Now, granted, I’m sure much of the equipment was on its way in from the field but you can still tell when something looks like it’s taken care of between jobs or not. There’s no good excuse to not take care of your equipment. I’ve heard people in the past say things like “I want my equipment to look used so that customers and competitors see that we’re actually busy.” Well, that’s an excuse to be lazy when it comes to cleaning and maintaining the outward condition of the equipment.

I worked for a manager once upon a time who placed an enormous priority on keeping our equipment looking good. Our units and support trucks were cleaned after every single job. In fact, the job wasn’t complete until that unit left the wash bay and was parked back on the line. This was a definite strength for this manager. We would spot paint our equipment when it started showing wear in certain places. We would hand clean the unit when it was rigged up on location during a particularly long job and started to look overly messy. We had to take our gloves off before reaching into one of our tool boxes to get something, and anything that came out of those tool boxes had to be cleaned before we returned it. Once every few months, we would pull everything out of the tool boxes, clean, lubricate, and paint, and then clean out the entire tool box itself before replacing contents.

This was mostly a single district practice. When we’d go out of town and work on another district’s units, they were disgusting. They were missing tools. Some tools didn’t function properly because they weren’t maintained. The units were covered in long-dried oil, salt, and chemicals. While the job was on, we would do what we do. Clean the tool boxes, clean the tools, lubricate, paint, et cetera. When the job was over, those out-of-town units went to the wash bay and were washed cleaner than they’d probably been since entering the field.

There are managers out there who feel that spending the money on such practices is a waste of resources. Some just like to minimize cash going out; some are worried about the size of their bonuses. What they don’t realize is that the appearance of their equipment may be costing them work over time. It doesn’t take much to maintain these crucial assets. These managers would very likely make up the money spent on the odd job that they pick up just because their equipment, and therefore their brand, stand out.

Why is maintaining your equipment so important?

Most of your equipment (if it’s a semi or pulled behind a pickup) is basically a rolling billboard. I’m sure I’m not the only person on the road who looks when some oilfield equipment drives by. I also make sure to read the name on the door. People are looking. What do you want them to see? No, it’s not some well used piece of equipment. You want clean. You want shiny. When I was managing a trucking yard, we had aluminum tankers. I made sure they regularly made their way out to get acidized. They looked good. Not only did they look good, but my drivers felt better about getting behind the wheel of a fresh looking truck.

Customers like new looking equipment as well. If you dazzle them with your maintenance, they will have more faith in the fact that you know your job and are capable of completing it well and on time. It’s marketing! Yes, it may take additional non-billable hours to put the time in to keeping things looking good, but it’s worth it. You’ve got to make the time somehow. Maybe not after every job (some service lines go out as a fleet for each job and there may not be enough time) but definitely on a regular basis. Set a schedule for your team and have them keep to it.

Your equipment is the second most important part of your operation (field hands being the first, as I spoke about in a previous article: How Do You Treat Your Field Hands?). Make it look good and it will make you look good. Remember, it’s the very first thing that your customers see pulling onto location. So, get off to a good start.

I can’t begin to count the number of favorable comments we received when we would show up to do a job with those clean units. Even better, we knew exactly where everything was onboard. You should have seen a company man’s eyes when he asked for a certain kind of wrench: barely looking, we would strip off our gloves, reach into the correct box, and pull out what he was looking for. Not a drop of grease or oil or dirt stained his hand when we placed that wrench in his palm. This also drew favorable comments.

The bottom line is, your equipment is important. More so than you may realize. So acidize your aluminum; repair your paint; give it a good spray with hot, soapy water; spot clean it; and get rid of all that rust. Make it look good, and you, your team, and your company will look good right along with it.

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