Previously in this two-part feature: Three years after COVID onset and subsequent truck parts shortages, owner-operators navigate rocky procurement landscape
All the tractors in Rob Hallahan's small fleet today are 2022 model year or newer, so he's generally not in the parts-buying business outside of general-maintenance items. Over the years, though, when his trucks have gone down, he's occasionally found unique ways to source hard-to-find parts.
Most of the owner-operators and small fleet owners who responded to Overdrive's recent parts-procurement survey earmarked some kind of shift in strategy to adapt to the myriad parts availability challenges these last few years.
As shown in the chart, too, plenty owner-operators are in that "Other" column, where you find some quite crafty, nontraditional moves to find the part and keep the rig running. La Crosse, Wisconsin-based Rob Hallahan, whose Hallahan Transport seven-truck fleet hauls a mix of van and reefer freight, told the story of a DEF quality sensor failure that put one of his trucks down in the middle of the pandemic. His driver was down for about five weeks, and the dealer was telling him the part was on a 26-week backorder.
Hallahan knew a guy, who knew a guy, who'd done some "deleting" of emissions equipment. Hallahan was able to buy several old DEF tanks, DEF quality sensors intact. As he put it, "we had three of them on hand when everybody else was trying to find" the necessary sensor, somewhat notorious for failing. "We had a second one go out, and we just pulled it and put a new one in.”
Sometimes the fix for that kind of an issue can be even simpler, though. One of Hallahan’s trucks needed a crankcase ventilation sensor, which doesn’t put the truck down but does continuously throw codes.
