Greg Harper manages a garage that sees it all, all the time. On any given day, he and the City Service Center Technicians can be found fixing fire engines, bush-hog tractors, backhoes, pickups, patrol cars and more.

“Our technicians have to be very flexible,” Harper said.

Last year, Harper became the center’s superintendent, a job responsible for the maintenance and repair of all 193 city-owned vehicles.  Harper has stuck with many fleet management practices instituted by his predecessor and former boss Omby Franks.

Yet he has added improvements such as an oil sampling program and onsite tire service equipment. Each change is an attempt to get more mileage out of taxpayer dollars, Harper says.

Citizens might not be able to point out the service center even if they’ve driven by it a hundred times. Harper and his four Technicians occupy the back sections of the Public Works Complex on North Main Street.

But City employees —Harper calls them his customers — are extremely familiar with the garage.  The Police, Fire, Street, Grounds & Maintenance, Administrative and Parks & Recreation Departments as well as Community and Development Services rely on the center to keep their fleets in shape. Most of the city’s 193 vehicles are scheduled to come in for maintenance once a quarter.

 Harper says the garage’s goal is to see each vehicle every four months but not in-between.  

When a vehicle is due for a visit, Technicians prepare for a 30-point service. That’s more thorough service than the typical lube stop or dealership might do. On top of quarterly maintenance, the center provides standard services needed on a semiannual, annual or multi-year basis.

 “It’s a pretty good cycle that we have,” Harper says.

Harper learned how to manage this constant flow of traffic efficiently from Franks and he relies on the hard work of Technicians like John Bettencourt to carry it out.

Greg Harper (left) talks with Service Center technician John Bettencourt about possible sources of hydraulic failure on a bush-hog tractor.

Bettencourt is certified by the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence as a Master  Automotive Technician like his other coworkers. He understands the role maintenance plays in the service facility’s overall performance. “We catch a lot of problems before they happen,” Bettencourt says. While replacing the water pump in a truck used at public cemeteries, Bettencourt points out that if the worn-out pump had been neglected, it could lead to a blown head gasket in the engine. Instead, regular maintenance detected the need for a new water pump and enabled mechanics to fit it into the schedule at a time when new parts would be available and when the cemetery staff could spare it.

Of course, sudden breakdowns cost a lot. But they guzzle valuable time too. If the breakdown occurs on the job, service personnel will sometimes be called to the location. Repair can go a lot slower on a riverbank or a roadway than it does in the garage.

But even if the vehicle is brought in, the job can be time-consuming. To diagnose the cause of a major break can require a mechanic to disassemble heavy, highly-fastened or hard-to-reach parts. Then once the cause is pinpointed, there might still be a wait for a part that isn’t locally available.

Harper reminds himself that the time a vehicle spends sitting in his garage is time the city employee is without a vehicle or forced to use a less familiar vehicle.

“We know it’s an inconvenience for someone to drive a different vehicle,” Harper says.

Department fleets do carry spare vehicles in the event of a breakdown. But employees usually perform better when they drive their regular vehicle.

To make fixes quicker, Harper distributes manpower strategically. One technician is assigned to the Fire Department with its large, loaded trucks. Another technician focuses on the Street Division’s sweepers, back-hoes, and dump trucks.

Two technicians are assigned to the Police Department, which with 86 cars and trucks, has the biggest fleet of any department.

Ken Pursley enjoys specializing in the patrol cars because he worked as an auto mechanic for more than 30 years.  Because of his daily contact with the Hopkinsville Police Department, he has gotten to know officers, squad cars and…a mouse. Recently, one officer put a work order after noticing worn tires and his check engine indicator light on. Pursley removed a rear tire was peering into the wheel well when he spotted a handful of wires chewed clean through. Later, he spoke with the officer who confirmed there were mice in his garage at home.

Service Center technician Ken Pursley locates the source of an engine warning. The gnawed wires in the rear wheel well of a patrol car, looked suspiciously like the work of a very hungry mouse.

Whenever the workload intensifies, technicians can be pulled off their specialties to help out wherever they are needed. Harper spends much of his time training technicians so that they are proficient on anything in the city’s fleet.

The office next to his is a library of owner’s manuals. Shelves from floor to ceiling hold huge volumes covering the ins and outs of every motor, hydraulics system and transmission in the city’s fleet. Because trucks are assembled from the parts of different manufacturers, the mechanic might have to consult several different manuals for a single vehicle.

Harper once argued with a doctor about whose job was more challenging. Harper made the point that when the doctor examines his patient, he knows where the heart is, where this gland is and where that bone is because it’s consistent for every human body.

The same assumptions can’t be made for trucks, Harper said. He has to figure out the assembly over and over again.

“Then the doctor reminded me that I get to turn my ‘patients’ off when I work on them,” Harper chuckled, “so we called it even.”

Taking on these challenges have motivated Harper through two decades of bending wrenches. He started his career with dealerships, working in the service departments at Patriot Chevrolet and Scott Oldsmobile-Nissan. Prior to taking over, Harper ran the Center’s daily operations for nine years, including when the facility relocated from the city landfill on Mount Zoar Road to the Public Works Complex in town.

“Being so close to the rest of our department has made working together much more efficient,” Harper said.

 Counting only the hours he has spent tapping and torqueing the underside of one vehicle or another would add up to two whole years. But it’s a labor that fascinates.

“I’ve got the attitude that I can make anything work,” Harper said.

Once when a street sweeper’s internal computer went haywire, Harper asked Franks not to get rid of it. In his spare time, he rewired the entire sweeper to bypass the computer. That was three years ago. The street sweeper has run ever since.

Now that he’s the one in charge, Harper innovates on a bigger scale. He introduced an oil sampling program which analyzes the lubricant between oil changes. The test can detect particles that result from different kinds of wear hidden under the hood.

“It’s like bloodwork,” Harper said. “You get early indications about how well internal components are functioning.”

Such analysis can help mechanics determine the longevity of a particular vehicle, Harper said.

Another major addition Harper made is onsite tire service. Harper researched the cost of the equipment needed to mount, balance and align tires and compared that to what the city normally spends out-sourcing their tire service.

“The police department alone goes through about 150 tires per year,” Harper said.

He was able to show a significant savings and a reduction in vehicle down-time by taking the service in house. 

“We understand that everything we do is paid for by tax payers,” Harper said. “We want to get the best value for that money.”