Episode 195: The Million Dollar Mistake: How Contaminated Fuel Took Down 110 Fleet Engines

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm Mark Canton, your host, and I'm joined by my good friend, award-winning fleet manager Dave Persad. And today we're gonna hear one of Dave's really cool and interesting stories about essentially an avoided catastrophe in his fleet and some of the challenges around that. Can't wait for you guys to hear this story. It's super cool. Let's get right into it.

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Dave, how you doing today?

I'm just fine. So yourself?

I'm doing great. Thank you. For those who don't know me, I'm the Vice President of Product and Consulting here at RTA. And Dave is the fleet manager down in Boynton Beach, Florida. I should say fleet manager extraordinaire. Multi-time Fleet of the Year winner, and Fleet— and you've also won a couple of Direct awards, if I'm not mistaken. Is that right too?

No, no, we just had, um, a Leading Fleets.

Leading Fleets, right? And you've placed 5 consecutive times on 100 Best Fleets when you were at West Palm. And now you've, uh, I mean, you just— you got— you got— if they gave you trophies instead of plaques for these things, you wouldn't have any more room in your office, right? In all, how many awards have you been associated with on the Fleet programs?

7.

7. That is amazing, man. Okay.

All team effort.

I know, I know. You're a very humble guy. And it's true, you've had some great team members. But, you know, there's a reason you've been around for those. So, but today what I wanted to talk to you about, you know, we've been— we've had a few episodes with some of our internal guys and some others about some of the crazy things they've seen in their career. And so I'm starting a little series around, you know, uh, sort of just, I don't know, just sort of like crazy or weird things, or some— maybe it's just a major challenge or an issue someone wouldn't think of, you know, and just kind of share that experience, um, you know, so that maybe people can learn from them or relate from them or corroborate, you know, comem— you know, camaraderie, whatever the right words are there. And you have a, you have a really, really good one that you shared with me recently. And so I just kind of wanted to get into it. I'm going to be quiet here for a second. I might pause you or interrupt you just to clarify or make sure I get the detail. But you've had an interesting thing with fuel, I don't know, relatively recently, I guess. So go ahead and tell us the story. Tell us what happened.

Absolutely. No, we had back in 2018, we had over the city of West Palm Beach, It started at first with the patrol cars coming in, you know, they had oil, engine oil coming up into the intake and, you know, the air filter is wet with oil pressure. What the hell? So they're thinking that, hey, the guy, the tech, didn't do the service on it, just added all— it was just in there for service, didn't get it done. So we, you know, It started one, one vehicle, then it went to two and three, and the same symptoms— pressure in the oil just pushing right up into the intake. The hell? The same. So we started looking at our processes, okay, our techs, control work orders, and looking, okay, well, what are you guys doing? What do you— you know, we did a lot of self-examining thinking. Of course, when everything goes wrong, the port and fleet.

Yeah, you blame yourself and everyone else is blaming you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys need to refer. We are on the defense here trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Right, so then you say, well, what are our techs doing? And you look at it and say, right, yeah.

Yeah, every week there's, you know, 3, 4, 5, whoa, what's going on? We bring it in, service again, drop it off, same thing happens again. So this went on for, so we are looking now late nights, hey, what are we doing? I'm even looking at waste oil. Quality to ensure that it balances for our new oilers to make sure that we are, you know, doing the oil changes and not doubting our guys, but just, you know, wanting to—

You gotta figure out what's going on. Yeah.

So when we took apart the first engine on the Interceptors and we, you know, I'm looking at any TSBs and whatnot, talking to the Ford directly and the dealers, hey, do you have a recall, any, Nothing. So originally we thought it was the PCV valve, the, uh, you know, that may have had an issue with the pressure and, and with the oil because that was also wet. Talking with the first one we had over at Ford, we had it stripped down and it was on top of the block, on top of the pistons, top of the block was like tar, hard tar. If you, I know you love to cook, but when you caramelize brown sugar and if it sticks too long on the part of the spoon and you gotta get that off, it was like that. You had to scrape it off. Huh, what the hell is going on here? So after we, you know, now we, engines are dropping left and right. So we are now, having it to go at one dealer couldn't handle it. We had to spread out to several dealerships. Hey, what is going on here? And we are to the point that we gotta replace engines. Hey, it's shot, we gotta replace it. Then one of the dealers went to, hey man, yeah, have you guys seen anything like this? Well, no, yeah. But one of the guys said, well, you know what? He talked to this guy at this city. He had a vehicle in here with the same thing. We replaced the engine. He had a similar thing. Issue, exactly what you're saying. Really? Give me a name and number. So got it. Walked to the phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. We had 3 vehicles. Okay, same thing. Wow. They had to replace the engine. Well, okay. Yeah, it was a fuel issue because they got fuel from the county, which is down south. And at one of their fuel depots. And, um, so then I called down to the county. Um, yes, they have an issue. Yep, contaminated fuel. They had the— one of the carriers that they used had biofuel and was contaminated with gas— the gasoline was contaminated with biofuel. So we had biofuel in the gasoline. And of course, you know, the compression ratio from, you know, 25:1 to 8:1, it's, you know, you would have the fuel that's sitting there unable to compress. Hence, just the biodiesel, the palm oil, the sugar content on it will give you that crystallized tar-looking effect on top. So it was shot. So boom. Well, that's one thing we were glad to find out. And the same carrier, that they used, we used as well.

Okay.

So we had, you know, fuel testing from dropping from the, from all the contaminated diesel and whatnot to try to get— now it's legal involved, so we had to try to get a game plan involved. But we had, by the time we were done, we had to replace 110 engines.

Wow. How big is the fleet?

That fleet was 1,100.

Wow.

So, but it grew. We thought it was only isolated to—

You replaced 10% of your fleet's engines. Oh my God.

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Then it grew from not only from interceptors. I think what— why it showed there first is because of the high island, the hard pursuits, and just the usage. That's why that showed up pretty quickly and first. But then it went on to F-150s, you know, other non-pursuit SUVs and whatnot. But we had to get legal involved and long story short that yeah, we had to have engines, have dealerships all throughout South Florida was dropping engines and we were directly sourcing, Ford was sourcing engines from all throughout the country to get this in for us.

Wow.

It was crazy times. A lot of sleepless nights, a lot of late nights, a lot of late Yeah, it was chaotic.

Well, yeah, you need your police vehicles on the road, and here you are dropping engines in them. Um, I mean, I have so many questions here. First off, well, what did you do about that? I mean, that's a lot of vehicles to be down at once. What, what did they do? Did they, did they hot seat the vehicles? You know, did you go get like one? What did you do? How did you get police out into the streets when they didn't have cars?

I mean, Right, right. Well, we had to use a— it was several things. We had to lease vehicles in, of course, non-pursuit vehicles. So, but we had some spare vehicles, you know, pursued that day.

They pulled in, right? Sure.

Yeah, they pulled in. Stuff that we were going to auction at the end of the lifecycle.

Bring it back in. Yeah.

Or say, bring it back in, let's get it back road ready. So with those two factors, we were able to at least help out on the pursuit end of it, but the non-pursuit code compliance and parks and whatnot, we just rented vehicles until we got things resolved. But it was, again, a lot of sleepless nights. I got gray hair pretty quick during that period.

All right, I have more questions. So, I mean, so the, You know, when you contact the county and they tell you, you know, that, oh yeah, we had, um, you know, the contaminated fuel, how did they figure it out? Like, how did they figure out that the fuel was the issue? Because they're on the same journey you're on, just maybe a few days ahead, right?

Yes, but they, they had issues as well too, right? That's 10 times more than we did.

Oh really?

Yes, we didn't hear anything about it, and no, you know It's only when I, if I don't know something, I love to ask questions. I want to get to the bottom of it. And this was, so by asking questions and working the phones, and by the time we, Mario, myself, members of the legal team, we had a meeting down there at the county. They were having a lawsuit going. We also got a lawsuit, legal involved and whatnot. Than having to keep my spreadsheet going, keeping track of engines, what went to what dealerships, what got repaired, because we paid for—

Yeah, you paid for that. You paid for the rent of vehicles, right? You know, absolutely. You lost money on the salvage value of the vehicles you didn't replace. I mean, there's a lot of money from a lot of moving parts going on there, right? You're paying overtime to guys and gals for staying late so that they can fix— you mentioned how late you were working.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, a lot of moving parts, but we, you know, rapid-fire getting— and the dealerships, and again, I go back to relationships. I do not underestimate the power of relationships. That will get you out of a bind, you know, pretty quick. The relationships we had with the dealerships, they— I mean, they were— there are guys coming in on Saturdays and Sundays because they knew I was in there, you know, calling them, I was in their face, I was dropping off donuts and pizza, you know, hey guys, we appreciate everything you guys are doing, you know, it was so, they thought I was working there, you know, how frequently it was seeing me.

Hey Dave, it was like cheers, right?

Yeah, but you know, with a situation, desperate situations call for desperate measures and having to be their front-end senator so they understand the urgency of what's at stake. To bring this to an end. It was pretty chaotic, but we got through it.

That's amazing there.

Wow.

Now, and don't tell me this if you can, or your uncle, but I'm assuming at some point there you guys were made whole by your supplier there, I hope, or you must have come to some sort of agreement. Were you able to iron things out with them? You know, did they accept blame? Do they accept that this— or did it get ugly? Or how did that pan out? Were you still, you know, customers when it was all said and done? I'm just curious.

No, no. Well, I think I can answer just a couple of things on that.

Okay, answer what you're comfortable with.

It got a little bit complicated, and we immediately, uh, we ceased from using that company. Sure. I know the county, they was locked in a very, you know, you know, costly legal battle with them too. Sure. And as do the city of West Palm Beach.

And then there's that cost, which is almost unrecoverable, which is now you got to run another bid, you're getting procurement involved, got to set up new suppliers, new relationships, new the whole nine yards. Uh, wow. And then, and then you, I mean, you had to clean up— was this fuel was in your fuel island, right? It was in your tanks, correct?

Yes, yes, we had to clean, yeah, the time to clean out the fuel island, have standby portable fuel tanker there to pump fuel in, having a guy there because it wasn't metered or anything there. So we had to really buy—

You were doing sticks?

Using sticks and a clipboard to really, hey, vehicle number, this needs to be pumped in. So it was a lot, I mean, it was chaos. Oh my gosh. There's a lot of moving parts. A lot of moving parts.

I just can't even imagine cleaning the tank. I mean, did you just replace the tank? Did they pump it all out, went in there, cleaned it?

It was an underground tank. We had to get it pumped out, cleaned out, flushed out a couple of times and—

Sure, but then all your vehicles too and their tanks that they still had gas in from there.

Absolutely, it was a massive, anybody had fueled up, but we kind of backtracked and figured out the date from when that contaminated load was from. And we backtrack and everyone, we had to immediately, a mass email went out, hey, come by freight, we gotta drop the fuel, you know, flush the tank out and, you know, fuel back up and go.

Oh my gosh, just the waste efforts, more cost on getting rid of all that stuff and then you're cleaning those tanks. So even the ones who maybe didn't break down, then the fuel cost itself, I mean, massive, massive, the amount of moving parts and variable costs.

But after that, we took some fuel samples off that truck prior to the delivery, dated it, you know, sent it away. Yeah, yeah. And a, in a nonflammable secured, sure, uh, cabinet. And we would do that, you know, for, you know, Every 30 days, every 30 days, because if there was a contamination, it would show up within that 30-day period and rolling 30 days. So it would show up within that 30-day period.

And I think you just told the industry about a new fuel management best practice right there, Dave. Yeah, no, that's your fuel. Don't assume, assume nothing.

Right. And it's It happened, it happened, and it affected 3 agencies. Um, it could happen to anyone, right?

It could happen, but also contaminations don't always— you know, you can have something in there that's hurting your assets that maybe doesn't lead to something so extreme, right? But maybe it's much more slowly eating away at— right? You got metal contaminants, you got— I mean, I've seen that many times before. Where it's not quite as, you know, what's the word, dramatic or drastic as what you just experienced. But crappy fuel will destroy your vehicles.

So. Oh, oh, for sure.

Yeah. You know, so it actually is a really good idea to test your fuel and know what's going in there, especially when you're buying it wholesale and you're doing bulk fuel. So, yeah, that's an interesting— what a great story.

Yeah, I know a lot of— I don't know for a lot of agencies that do We talked about testing, but the oil sample test—

oil sample testing is super important.

You know, in the private sector, we did a lot of that, right? We did a lot of that, and we were able to detect, you know, prevent catastrophic failures from coolant leaks and fuel dilution.

And sure, not to mention, usually you can— what I find is most of the time you can prolong PMs, especially if you're using really good oil. Um, save a bunch of money there as well. So Correct. Yeah. Wow, man, what a great story. I can't thank you enough. Thank you for taking some time into sharing it. I think it's really neat. And yeah, we definitely want to have you back on, Dave, and share more thoughts and more stories with you.

It's neat to talk about it now, but it wasn't neat then.

Right. When you're doing overtime for, you know, how many straight days. And yeah, I hear you.

Yeah, I think we stayed a couple of times at the EOC, you know, because of how it was. We have guys, we had, you know, guys were coming in, you know, we have multiple shifts of guys coming in because we knew what was at stake.

And, um, you know, there must have been quite a sense of relief though, right, when, when you finally said, oh, it's the fuel, it's not me, it's not my guys, it's not—

Absolutely, because, you know, again, everyone was pointing at us. Of course, we are the subject matter experts, right? Everyone was pointing. And then we're doing a lot of self-reflection. Did we really— did something really go wrong? Did we not do something? What did we do? We went back through work orders again, documentation. And this is having a great— having a good FIMS system will really get you with the ease to go back and take a look at your work orders and backtrack and see and make sure that everything was dispensed, the pump and the PM was indeed done.

Right.

Nothing just stands for wait and go. Yeah, absolutely. So that, that helped us immensely.

And, um, a great system, but also great practices around that system, right? The system leads the horse to water. We can't make you drink it. You got— you're right, exactly. You know, you got to have good data management practices. And yeah, if you do that, you, you put yourselves in a situation to be able to handle this and to be able to figure out, figure it out, which many folks, you know, would still be trying to figure it out.

Yeah. Yeah, but you're right. Hearing that it was a fuel was a sign of relief.

Yeah. Even though it was like— and then it's like, I can only imagine, you know, it's like, oh, it's not us.

Yes.

Wait a minute. Oh, crap. What do we do now? I got to go get this tank. I got to go. Yeah.

Now we're taking that. Now the task is that.

I can only imagine. What a cool story, man. Well, listen, thank you for taking some time to share your story. I really appreciate that. And yeah, we'll definitely have you on again and we'll talk some more. I know I'm not going to get to see you at Connect because you're at Flagfa and I'm not, you know, this year they had to overlap. Long story short, we didn't want that, but it's the way it played out. But I hope you enjoy Flagfa next week. And to our customers, thank you for listening. And, you know, and our listeners, if you have any other cool stories, drop them in the comments. Tell us about them. If there's anybody you want to hear or someone you want to see on the podcast as a guest, let us know. Any questions for us, any questions for Dave, shoot us an email at podcast@rtafleet.com and we'll be sure to direct them the right way. In the meantime, thank you so much everyone for listening. Visit our website www.rtafleet.com. And Dave, thanks so much for taking the time and for talking to me. It's always a pleasure being with you, man.

No, the pleasure's all mine. Thank you, sir.

All right, my friend, have a great weekend.

You too, brother. Bye-bye.

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