One of the main considerations when purchasing a new vacuum truck is just how much truck you actually need. There are many factors to think about: average trip length, distance to disposal, type of jobs, location and size of the average customer’s tank. All these factors help pumpers decide whether they choose a compact, agile vehicle or a hefty, roomy rig.
Because the vehicle will be a primary tool in revenue generation for years, and because it will be critical to efficient production on a daily basis, the decision is never lightly made. A significant, six-figure investment adds gravitas to the process.
Three pumpers share here what they think about when it comes time to retire an old rig for a replacement, or to accommodate the happy circumstance of expansion. When it comes to long-term profitability, one thing’s for certain: Size really does matter.
“Truck size is important,” says Mark Booso, owner of Booso’s Septic Tank Cleaning, which services the east-central portion of the Buckeye State. “What you drive has to fit what you do.” Situated about halfway between Dayton and the Indiana state line, Booso primarily serves suburban and rural customers with septic pumping, inspection and the installation of risers and baffles.
After you decide what you need, he says, “The biggest consideration is money — what you can afford. And it’s not just buying the truck you have to think about. There’s the cost of keeping it up: regular maintenance, the tires underneath. That’s all part of the long-term cost, and you have to remember that.”
He says that the biggest disadvantage of larger trucks for his business is that some of his smaller trucks already have trouble fitting between big trees and buildings, or down a narrow drive. “I think we’d also have problems with some customers who’d be afraid a bigger rig might hurt their driveways.”
He runs smaller trucks, Ford L7000 bodies with tanks averaging 1,500-gallon capacity. He says he doesn’t see moving up to anything larger any time in the near future.
For AAA Drain Doctor, the pressure’s on to go bigger, but the downward pressure of the economy is more powerful for the time being. The company performs residential and commercial septic pumping, drain cleaning and relining for customers in northeastern Iowa. Its fleet includes two 3,600-gallon vacuum service trucks.
“In our area, we’ve got new mandates from the municipal plants where we dump that say even if we bring in half a tank or just a single load, we get charged the same as a full load,” says technician supervisor Rick Johnson. “So we’re definitely going to be looking at going with bigger trucks.”
This move, he says, would help the company achieve economies of scale by being able to run more or longer routes before having to make a disposal run. It would also allow the pumpers to make sure their tanks are as full as possible, to get their money’s worth at the plant.
Economic considerations right now are holding the company back when it comes to making fleet upgrades. New truck purchases will have to wait until business becomes more regular and can sustain that expense. “We’ll have to wait until more of our corporate customers go back to preventive maintenance and there’s more work for the trucks to do,” Johnson says.
“We have gone bigger where we need to,” says Gary Mentzer. His company, Reliable Sanitation/G.D.M. Inc., services the Pike’s Peak region of central Colorado. “We have all different size trucks, small trucks that handle small jobs, large vehicles we can use to handle multiple-site jobs.”
The firm, which operates five smaller companies under the umbrella of G.D.M. Environmental, performs septic and grease trap pumping, and sewer and drain cleaning for residential, commercial and municipal customers. It fields a fleet of about 30 vehicles, most of them Kenworth trucks. The company’s largest vacuum truck has a 4,000-gallon tank, “only because of (Department of Transportation) weight restrictions,” says Mentzer. He would clearly like to run larger trucks, but his territory’s spread-out nature requires them to go over too many smaller, weight-restricted bridges.
“I don’t think there are too many cons to running larger trucks, when you think of advantages and disadvantages,” he says. “I think it’s really something where the pros outweigh the cons when it comes to going bigger. In our area, most of the smaller guys are getting bigger trucks so they can do more jobs. Probably the biggest issue driving that has been fuel costs. If they can stay out and keep pumping and not have to go back and forth to dump, that saves them some money.” He notes that fuel prices have been going up and will continue to be an issue.
Mentzer acknowledges that challenging terrain in mountain and hill country may help dictate the trucks chosen by some contractors. “The really large (industrial vacuum) trucks we have, we try to keep off the big hills (of the Rocky Mountains),” he says, but it isn’t due to the steepness of grade or the thinner, engine-stalling atmosphere, as one might suspect.
Instead, it’s because there’s more chance for these large rigs to get stuck on uneven terrain. “We do take these trucks into some of the more ‘off-road’ type areas, if the majority of the ground is flat. We just pull them as close as possible (to the pumping site) and bring extra lengths of hose to cover the rest of the distance.”
