Clive Seabrook, CEO of wheel alignment specialist, Pro-Align, outlines how workshop equipment from Hunter can support businesses in improving their workshop management:
Choosing the right tools to help manage a workshop is crucial. The developers at workshop equipment manufacturer, Hunter, have created tools to help workshops not only reduce vehicle service times but increase profit, revenue and customer retention – all at the same time.
Choosing the right tools
Traditional commercial vehicle (CV) alignment systems do not provide a simultaneous multi-axle measurement, but instead, rely on sensors being moved one axle at a time, in a staged process. The single axle measurements are then combined into a final multi-axle reading; however, the WinAlign Heavy-Duty (WAHD) from Hunter, can measure all three axles simultaneously in one easy action, cutting measurement and servicing times. The system utilises a number of technologies and innovations designed to make a technician’s life easier and processes faster, with accurate alignment results produced in just four minutes.
Saving time
With a traditional CV alignment check taking around 12-15 minutes to complete, many workshops have felt that they could not justify the investment in additional labour hours to offer proactive and speculative alignment checks for multi-axle vehicles; however, in order to deliver a faster alignment check, the WAHD does not require any axles on the vehicle to be jacked. Instead, a simple rolling compensation can be carried out with Hunter’s Truck Pusher, a battery powered multi-use vehicle pusher which is capable of moving vehicles weighing up to 20t.
The number of walking steps required to perform the alignment job and the number of sensor movements are also reduced. Hunter’s engineers calculated that the total steps taken by technicians to conduct an alignment check can be reduced from 203 to just 81 when switching to the Hunter system.
Increasing customer retention
While reducing labour times within a workshop is important, overall vehicle downtime is of major concern to the vehicle operator. Consequently, keeping servicing time to minimum means it is critical to find an alignment system that is accurate but also does the job fast.
