Maintaining the Long Haul

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A smart maintenance organization helps to keep award-winning Roadrunner Freight delivering value over the road

“If you don't have maintenance, you're not going nowhere regardless of what you have. Maintenance provides the fuel, the food, the equipment, and the mobility.” David Seitz learned that truth during his 25 years in the U.S. Army, most of which were spent in maintenance repair organization (MRO) leadership.

After retiring from active duty, the combat veteran worked for the Oshkosh Corporation in Afghanistan; once stateside, he focused largely on fleet management. These days, he’s leading the maintenance operation of one of the fastest growing less-than-truckload (LTL) freight carriers in the nation, Roadrunner Transportation Systems.

David Seitz

“I came to Roadrunner for the challenge and to make a difference in the maintenance program with the knowledge that I've gained throughout my years,” Seitz said. As Roadrunner’s Director of Maintenance, he leads the charge in ensuring that their national carrier fleet operates at peak safety and delivers superior technical performance.

Reorganizing and restructuring Roadrunner’s Rapid Response Team was an immediate undertaking. “The rapid response team is dedicated to providing 24-hour support to the drivers on the road for dispatches, fuel, breakdowns – anything and everything that they may need,” he said. “Now they'll be able to have maintenance help them 24/7.”

With headquarters in Downers Grove, Ill., and terminals in more than 40 metropolitan markets, Roadrunner offers a full suite of transportation solutions, including customized and expedited LTL, logistics, transportation management solutions including intermodal, as well as freight consolidation, inventory management, expedited services, international freight forwarding, custom brokerage, and comprehensive global supply chain solutions.

Roadrunner’s takeover of their LTL sector is powered by over 1,000 independent contractors, a network of 36 quality service centers, 21 of which are brick-and-mortar facilities. In coordination with strategic rail partnerships and over 100 pickup and delivery partners, the award-winning enterprise delivers to all major cities in the U.S., handling more direct long-haul metro-to-metro shipping than any other national LTL carrier.

As part of a successful 2022 restructuring, the company created a number of service expansions including the creation of Guaranteed Service in select lanes, which offers shippers on-time delivery by the promised date or a full refund, opening a new Atlanta service center, and establishing one-day service between its Southern California and Chicago locations. As a result of their efforts, they’ve posted the fourth-largest revenue growth of any LTL carrier year-over-year since 2022, and their net promoter scores jumped 26%.

The moves also landed Roadrunner on the Journal of Commerce’s top 20 LTL carriers list and have garnered a slate of awards including a spot-on Inbound Logistics’ Top 100 trucking company list, named 2022’s most Improved LTL carrier by Mastio™, recognized by Newsweek™ as one of America’s Most Trustworthy Companies, and earned the 2023 Platinum LTL Carrier Award from Echo Global Logistics.

“Our Smart Network™ is the preferred choice of shippers looking to move freight quickly and reliably, with driver teams executing over-the-road moves,” he said. “We have more than 1,000 drivers leveraged at the Roadrunner smart network to empower their businesses and are financially motivated to deliver freight on time, intact, and damage-free – without moving any freight by rail.”

Eliminating railroad shipping considerably raised the company’s profile and contributes to their ongoing growth.

“We pride ourselves on not moving anything by rail,” he reiterated, adding that the strategy enables Roadrunner customers to benefit from leading industrial transit times. The company’s award-winning operation platform is fueled by AI and machine learning technology, assuring the integrity of custodial controls with real-time tracking and visibility. “Direct routing eliminates the need for rehandled and freight handovers, hence reducing the risk of loss or damage.”

Roadrunner’s proprietary technology optimizes volume to build direct loads and make those handovers a thing of the past, ensuring that the freight runs over the road by the most direct route possible with the least amount of handling. Minimal handling enables Roadrunner to transport freight across high-volume lanes more quickly than competitors with traditional hub-and-spoke models.

Operational excellence ties everything together, with the company reporting that their on-time pickup and delivery percentages are industry leading with customers flagging fewer than 1% of exceptions on freight delivery. Exceptions are disruptions during the freight delivery process that impact the delivery schedule, including fleet issues such as flat tires or breakdowns.

The company’s expert teams are composed of professionals from a variety of different backgrounds, from manufacturing to healthcare to transportation and beyond. “Our management team alone has a combined 100-plus years, specifically within the LTL sector with the key dedication to customer and driver experience,” he said. “Our motto is, ‘Orange and Black Has Your Back.’”

Fleet utilization is one province of the maintenance group. “Excess equipment sitting in the yard is not making any money. When equipment is being used too much it may tend to have a short life cycle and higher maintenance cost,” he said. Fleet utilization, informed decision-making about vehicle acquisitions, maintenance strategies, replacement timing, disposal methods, and preventive maintenance compliance all factor into the total cost of ownership.

The operation requires rigorous adherence to the predictive maintenance schedule, as well as being fully prepared at the intersection of reactive and preventive maintenance.

“I'm a blend of both preventative and reactive, just due to the nature of the beast,” Seitz said, pointing out that pre- and post-trip inspections and completing proper preventative maintenance schedules on time will always help to curb reactive maintenance. “But with tire failures, and regen issues, there are things that you will have to react to, and as long as you can keep those under wraps, you're golden.”

Seitz has a warning for corner cutters that take the risk of doing things quickly but not thoroughly: eventually, poor maintenance will tell on itself. “If your maintenance is not great, or you're not doing it, or you're pencil-whipping it, then it's going to show in your fleet,” he admitted. “You're going to have breakdowns. Stuff is just going to happen, and it will show what you weren't doing.”