They are the driving force behind keeping a fleet of 276 Jordan District school buses running safely and smoothly.
On this National School Bus Safety Week, meet the mechanics. They are men and women who work behind the scenes, under the hood, examining engines, testing brakes, inspecting tires, even repairing upholstery on some of the largest vehicles on the roadway.
Find out how our amazing mechanics work day and night, in some of the worst weather conditions, to keep kids safe on the school bus.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. They are the driving force behind keeping a fleet of 276 Jordan School District school buses running safely and smoothly. It's National School Bus Safety Week, so we are going to take you to meet the mechanics. They are men and women who work behind the scenes under the hood, examining engines, testing brakes, inspecting tires, even repairing upholstery on some of the largest vehicles on the roadway. Find out how our amazing mechanics work day and night in some of the worst weather conditions to keep kids safe on the school bus.
We're here with Richard Birrell, the shop foreman here at Transportation, where maintenance is done on all of our school buses. Richard, thanks for taking some time.
Richard Birrell:
You're welcome. Thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
This is one of the jobs where people say, ‘Hey, what do you guys do all summer?’ There's a ton of work to be done in the summer to prepare for the school year and close out the previous one. Tell me what your summers look like.
Richard Birrell:
Our summers are just playing catch up, and finishing up with their services. Right now we're in the middle of doing three engines, so we're doing complete overhauls on three of the buses right now. Spring jobs, break jobs, we're going through everything. We went through every bus this year to make sure everything's ready to go again.
Anthony Godfrey:
And there are a lot of safety requirements and expectations, timing of inspections and maintenance work.
Richard Birrell:
Yeah. We make sure all the safety is up on every vehicle here, if it's due for safety emissions or whatever. We've done our emissions this summer. We don't stop. We're busy all year long,
Anthony Godfrey:
So it's a lot of work. How many buses do we have in our fleet, would you say?
Richard Birrell:
274 as of right now.
Anthony Godfrey:
And we have a few of those that are natural gas vehicles, right?
Richard Birrell:
114 of them.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about the maintenance of a natural gas vehicle versus a traditional engine.
Richard Birrell:
The only real difference is, they're basically the same engine, other than a natural gas has a set of spark plugs, so we have to do service on spark plugs. But other than that, turbochargers diesel is controlled by intake heat pressure and natural gas is controlled by gasoline, which would be a spark plug fire type situation. So the service on those is a little bit more, every 30,000 miles, but not bad.
Anthony Godfrey:
And how many people are there on your staff to maintain all those buses?
Richard Birrell:
We're nine right now.
Anthony Godfrey:
Nine of you?
Richard Birrell:
Nine of us.
Anthony Godfrey:
That is a large bus to employee ratio?
Richard Birrell:
Yes, we are one short of what we're supposed to have.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now is most of the work that you do maintenance, I assume, but there are some emergencies that happen as well?
Richard Birrell:
We do everything in this shop short of transmission work. We do body work, we do engines, we rebuild our own engines. We do frame up, we do springs, We do everything in here.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. Nine people.
Richard Birrell:
Nine people. I have certain people like this guy that works on this bay right here. He does suspension work. He loves doing it. It's heavy work, but he loves it, so we just let him do it.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. Okay. Well, it's good to have some people who can specialize. Now, you've got a variety of types of buses also. Some buses that are designed to service those with special needs. And you have different different brands of buses as well, don't you?
Richard Birrell:
Correct. We have Blue Birds, Internationals, and Thomas's. We have special needs buses, which is one, like one behind you right here. Like I said, we have 114 natural gas buses. The rest are field trip diesels or pushers, which we call pushers, which is that size right there. We have three different brands. I have 18 years worth of seven different engines, 18 years worth of models on 'em. So we have a lot. We have to learn every year. Just like cars, they come out every year with new stuff on 'em. So yeah, we're constantly learning them.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow, that sounds extremely complicated.
Richard Birrell:
We have to be able to know what we're doing so we can teach the drivers what they're doing.
Anthony Godfrey:
Right. Yeah, exactly. What is the toughest job in the shop here?
Richard Birrell:
Right now? Just maintaining the fleet.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah.
Richard Birrell:
Just constantly keeping up on with what drivers are going on and constantly making sure things that need to come in here are getting in here and getting back out on the road.
Anthony Godfrey:
What are the hours during the school year? The hours of operation?
Richard Birrell:
We work from 5:30 in the morning till 5:30 at night. I have two crews, an early shift crew and a late shift crew. Early shift comes at 5:30 and they go home at 2:00, and my late shift comes in at 8:30 and they go home at 5:00. Then I have two lead mechanics that hang out till 5:30.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. You really cover the day.
Richard Birrell:
And I fill in all the blanks that are missing.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. And I know those blanks do come up. Wow. It's just really incredible the work that you have ahead of you for a small group. I am not mechanically inclined. So just looking at this engine right here seems very, very complex. And this is a unique kind of lift. This has gotta be a lift that's made specifically for school buses.
Richard Birrell:
Well, they make it for trucks and everything else. They're 18,000 pounds a piece. That's what their weight lift ability is. But because we have flat floors in here, this is the way we go with it. The new building put the inground lifts in.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, I see.
Richard Birrell:
They're all tied in together. So you just push one button and then they all raise at the same time and they all lower at the same time.
Anthony Godfrey:
So there's basically one tower by each of the four wheels and you push a button.
Richard Birrell:
I can take it right here.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay.
Richard Birrell:
The power's on so I can raise it.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, it leans in and lifts that bus.
Richard Birrell:
Leans in and picks the whole thing up at the same time.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's really something to see, huh?
Richard Birrell:
Well, it saves us. It saves a lot of time and effort on us.
Anthony Godfrey:
How much does a bus weigh?
Richard Birrell:
36,000 gvw’s on them.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.
Richard Birrell:
Empty is about 24,000 a piece for 'em.
Anthony Godfrey:
Huh, interesting. How old are our oldest buses, would you say? You said that the grants are over about 17 years?
Richard Birrell:
Over 18 years. Because of the grants that we've gotten to buy natural gasses, we are at about 2008, 2009 is the oldest bus I have.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now, those grants, when they come through, my understanding is you have to prove that the diesel bus is out of commission. You drill a hole through the engine.
Richard Birrell:
Yeah. We have to drill a three by three hole and we have to film it. So there's a three by three hole engine block, so it can't be resold, reused. We have to cut the frames in half, in the middle of the buses so the buses can no longer be used for frame worthy. So we have to film all that while we're doing, or after we do it, we film the whole thing and send it in. So, the bus can no longer be on the road. It has to be destroyed.
Anthony Godfrey:
So how long have you worked for Jordan School District?
Richard Birrell:
23 years now.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. And is this where you got started or did you work elsewhere as a mechanic?
Richard Birrell:
I worked through Thomas Lewis Transportation, selling Thomas school buses long before I came here. So I've been doing this about 33, 34 years now.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. Well, we're very glad to have you in Jordan District. It's a huge operation. Tell me, we're standing in the new transportation facility. It's been a couple of years now, but I've heard nothing but good things about the space that you now have to work in.
Richard Birrell:
We love this place here. We have 14 bays now total. So every mechanic has their own bay so they can get in and out by themselves. We're not in each other's way. We have plenty of room. We have a brand new welding shop in here so we can maintain and do our old welding, whatever we need to be done. We have a new paint booth, we have a body shop, we have a part-time body guy that takes care of that. And that’s a full-time job just taking care of that.
Anthony Godfrey:
Right? So the body shop and everything in between. Our previous facility was a lot smaller.
Richard Birrell:
We had a previous facility that was what they called the dome, or what we called the dome.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, it was the inflatable building.
Richard Birrell:
That’s correct. It was a lot smaller. Yes. When we worked in that, we had to coordinate moving all the buses in that we needed to work on, then moving everything out at the same time so we could concentrate back and forth. Because we only had one access door to get in and out of.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. Now with one door and not enough bays for everybody, I'm sure a lot of time was just taken up moving buses around.
Richard Birrell:
It was. That's why I said we coordinated. When we’re ready to move, we need to move everything, including what's in the middle, to get it out. So they can get in and out of there. And then they bring another bus in, then we can slide back in again. It took a lot of coordination to do that.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. Well that seems like a good set up. I see with the hood of the school bus up, I see those horns.
Richard Birrell:
Those are air horns.
Anthony Godfrey:
Those are serious air horns there.
Richard Birrell:
Yes, they are. They make a good noise out there.
Anthony Godfrey:
Stay with us. When we come back, buckle up while we take you through a really big bus wash.
Break:
Are you looking for a job right now? Looking to work in a fun and supportive environment with great pay and a rewarding career? Jordan School District is hiring. We're currently filling full and part-time positions. You can work and make a difference in young life and education as a classroom assistant or a substitute teacher. Apply to work in one of our school cafeterias where our lunch staff serves up big smiles with great food every day. We're also looking to hire custodians and bus drivers. In Jordan School District we like to say people come for the job and enjoy the adventure. Apply today at employment.jordandistrict.org
Anthony Godfrey:
Can we walk by one of the bays and just see what that looks like?
Richard Birrell:
Some of the bus bays? Sure.
Anthony Godfrey:
How much oil do you go through in this place?
Richard Birrell:
Quite a bit. We order every 500 gallons, probably twice a month.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.
Richard Birrell:
This bay here is done for my driver's ed vehicles, Suburbans, everything else. I have one mechanic dedicated strictly to this stuff. So he takes care of all driver’s ed vehicles and all the Suburbans we have.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now talk about hard miles. Those driver’s ed vehicles get some hard miles.
Richard Birrell:
They get a lot of damage to them.
Richard Birrell:
This is Kelly, one of my techs here.
Anthony Godfrey:
Hey Kelly, how are you doing?
Richard Birrell:
He's got a material list about a mile long on this one here. It started out with service, but he’s got a bunch of stuff going on with it too. So when they come into the shop here, when they're ready to go out the door, they're a hundred percent ready to go. Our philosophy here is, we have one more day to fix it if it takes that long because of what we haul everyday.
Anthony Godfrey:
You don't send it out until it’s totally ready.
Richard Birrell:
Nothing's rushed. Yep.
Anthony Godfrey:
What's the most common problem that you see coming through on a bus?
Richard Birrell:
We haven't lost as many alternators as we used to. Alternators used to be an issue. Because of the EPA stuff that's on these buses, the DPFs and DEF systems, regen systems on them, we deal with a lot nowadays. For an over the road vehicle that does Highway 60-65, it works really well, but for everybody that does stop and go all day long, us, UPS, you name it, it's hard on the system. So we spend a lot of time working on them. Other than that it's services for most of it. Parts, radio, we go through radios and stuff like that. Like I said, he's building an engine right now. Just about ready on that one.
Anthony Godfrey:
Let's walk over there.
Richard Birrell:
Exhaust system. This building was built because of the natural gas. The one we're working on natural gas. If you ever develop a leak, natural gas is lighter than air. Our vent system goes on top and these, all these doors open up to vent everything out.
Anthony Godfrey:
So if natural gas is leaking, then the building vents itself and reacts to that.
Richard Birrell:
Yeah. Right. Natural gas is lighter than air, so it always dissipates above the buses. So if you see a natural gas bus, and I don't have one in here to show you, there's always a vent tube on the top. It'll go up in the air. So our exhaust fans are going up there and every one of these doors will open up to take care of that. So the building was built that way to handle that.
Anthony Godfrey:
And it's important to note that we have enough buses that we can take our time on a bus and make sure that it's tiptop before it heads out of the garage. What would you say to parents and students?
Richard Birrell:
Our whole sole philosophy in this place is to make these buses as safe as possible to handle the kids that we handle every day. We know there's a lot of kids out there that we deal with. So our importance is safety on these buses.
Everybody asks us, do we take the summers off? No, we don't take the summers off.
Anthony Godfrey:
No. Summer's gotta be one of your busiest times.
Richard Birrell:
It is. Trying to get things back up.
I have my own upholster in here. She makes all our seat covers and stuff now. We just buy it in bulk and she makes everything in here.
Anthony Godfrey:
So I see those huge rolls of material. And then you've got boxes of various covers for different sized seats.
Richard Birrell:
Whatever fits your seat in here.
Anthony Godfrey:
What color is that? Like a slate gray? Is every seat the same color?
Richard Birrell:
They're all blue. Yeah, they're all blue. That's just inside of one. They all look like this on the inside.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Then blue on the outside, huh?
Richard Birrell:
We try to keep everything as conformed as possible because we have a lot of stuff to do.
Anthony Godfrey:
So as much as you can reduce the variation it increases your ability to do the job.
Richard Birrell:
We keep her pretty busy in here.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. I'm sure that you do.
Richard Birrell:
This is Scott. This is my parts guy.
Anthony Godfrey:
Hi Scott.
Richard Birrell:
He spends half his life taking care of my problems.
Anthony Godfrey:
So how many different parts do we have coming through here, Scott?
Scott:
Thousands. I have thousands of parts every day. I do a lot.
Anthony Godfrey:
What's the toughest part to get these days?
Scott:
Tires.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, that's what Richard was saying.
Scott:
Tires are one of the most expensive items to get.
Anthony Godfrey:
Have they shot up in price?
Scott:
They have, yeah. They have. Steer tires run anywhere from $485 up to $500 each. That's why I recap 'em all of my front ones.
Anthony Godfrey:
So in addition to everything else we talked about, we have a shop that allows us to get everything we can out of every tire and every bus for as long as possible.
Richard Birrell:
We run a tire right now, we get an average of 60,000 miles on a tire, before they go bad on us. Then we'll send 'em out and get 'em recapped one time. Because usually by that time, the date on the tire's so old we can't recap 'em twice. If we recap a tire twice after that life cycle's done, the caps are sold to trucking industries or whoever would like to buy 'em. We don't run anything more than twice on these buses here.
Anthony Godfrey:
So you really make the most of everything we've got.
Scott:
Every mile. I license all the buses, I make sure they're all inspected. I do the fuel for the entire district. I see the fuel bill for the entire district, and I pay that.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's huge.
Richard Birrell:
That's extraordinary.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yes.
Scott:
That is extraordinary sometimes.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. Wow. Well, thank you for everything you do and for staying on top of this very complex job.
All right. So we're walking into the paint, collision and wash area.
Richard Birrell:
So I have room in here that I can put two buses in at a time for the body side. We just brought one back this afternoon that got wrecked today. We were really hoping to make it through one day, but it is what it is.
Anthony Godfrey:
Day one.
Richard Birrell:
Day one. We have a complete paint booth that we do our own paint work in here.
Anthony Godfrey:
So just to clarify, it's just a little body work. Nobody's hurt.
Richard Birrell:
Nobody was hurt.
Anthony Godfrey:
What's the name of school bus yellow? Is it school bus yellow?
Richard Birrell:
There's actually 11 kinds of school bus yellow.
Anthony Godfrey:
11 kinds of school bus yellow?
Richard Birrell:
So we have to do some matching. Well they call it all school bus yellow, but there's different shades of it. So I can't tell you every one of the 11 shades, he probably could, but I can't tell. But there are 11 different shades of school bus yellow.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. All right. How about, I mean, isn't there like a fluorescent green you could order just to kind of mix things up a little bit?
Richard Birrell:
No, the federal government won't let me do that.
Anthony Godfrey:
So all right. They tell you. 11 yellows is the range. That's it. That's all we got. All right. Fair enough. Richard Birrell:
This is the bus watch facility, but be careful, that'll shut off.
Anthony Godfrey:
Did you start it up?
Richard Birrell:
I did, yeah. Walked past the eye. So the buses, they can come in here and pre-clean, wash the windshield, do everything they need to do. We don't let 'em clean the inside of their buses in here because we don't want to tie up. We have a lot of buses to get through here. They can come in pre-wash their windshields, backs and then go through the bus wash here.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. That is serious business. None of that would even touch my car as it drove through, except for the water. The brushes would be too far away.
Richard Birrell:
We've tried the cars and they don't work very well.
Anthony Godfrey:
It doesn't work in here.
Richard Birrell:
But it works great for the buses. And I got a guy in here that comes in the morning, opens this place up, makes sure everything's set up for the drivers, whatever they need. That door's unlocked during the daytime so they can come in here and get any kind of cleaning supplies they need in here to clean their buses every day. And then he'll come back in the afternoon to close it down.
Anthony Godfrey:
I have to compliment you on this, and I've walked through this place several times. It's always very clean and organized and orderly.
Richard Birrell:
Randy's a detailer. She's good at this.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. Well, the whole shop looks great. Thanks very much for the tour. Thanks for taking the time. I know you're very busy. Thanks for keeping our kids safe and our buses on the road.
Richard Birrell:
Thank you. We do our best.
Anthony Godfrey:
You do great. Thank you very much.
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.