July 24, 2012  |   Comments (2)   |   Post a comment

New edition of school bus maintenance manual unveiled

By Thomas McMahon


SHARING TOOLS   | Email Print RSS
The second version of Brad Barker's school bus maintenance manual offers an additional 40 pages of pertinent info.

The second version of Brad Barker's school bus maintenance manual offers an additional 40 pages of pertinent info.

The second edition of Brad Barker’s school bus maintenance manual is now available.

Barker, the former shop manager at Park City (Utah) School District, told SBF that the new version contains the material from the first edition plus an additional 40 pages of pertinent information.

“Many corrections to the previous version have been made for overall improvement and understanding,” Barker said, noting that the new edition was nearly a year in the making.

The book, titled “School Bus PM: Instructional Manual for School Bus Fleets,” aims to help shop personnel develop and maintain a first-rate preventive maintenance program. It also explains how to document and analyze maintenance data, and how that information can be used to improve one’s operation.

For more details and to order the manual, go to schoolbuspm.sharepoint.com.


Post a Comment

Read more about: preventive maintenance


me gustaria contar con ese manual

miguel perez    |    Jul 25, 2012 04:26 PM

It is nice to see there are professional minded individuals who have turned wrenches, busted knuckles, worked long hours and finally put together informative information specifically for public school bus fleet maintenance shop personnel. Preventative maintenance is a proactive approach to getting the most bang for your tax dollars spent on school buses. If your shops are like ours we never finish safety inspections of the vehicles - we just start over. Attachment work orders usually involve scheduled maintenance such as engine, transmission, brake services we attach during a safety inspection. This saves from having to pull a bus in several different times for various work orders. There are many ways to pull maintenance on vehicles but as I expect to read in this new manual follow the manufacturers specifications and fluid specifications. Some actual repairs really are involved and the key is "Know your limitations as well as those limitations of your personnel working in the shop." Warranty sensitive time limits are vital to monitor. The best time to find an issue with a school bus is during the checking in procedure when that new bus is delivered. Put your people on schedule to pull a thorough inspection of every inch of the buses that are delivered. Have you best tech run it down the road and back for a test drive. We had a few buses delivered so fast they took off and left their GPS device still attached to the windshield. We ended up running one of the buses up to Indianapolis for front and rear axle alignments. Rear axle was way off and pushing bus off to one side of the road. Steering was super sensitive. So there are many good techs out there and I hope they all check out this new manual coming out. With some of us older ones getting set to retire it is good to see some of us are leaving some of our knowledge behind for the new young techs soon to take our place. It would be great to see a central location some of us could send some of our most odd or hard

Dan Luttrell    |    Jul 24, 2012 06:16 PM

Post a comment





Related Stories

Premium Member

Get bus sales numbers, transportation statistics, bus specifications, industry survey results, bus loading and unloading fatality statistics and more in the School Bus Fleet Research Center. Become a premium member today!
Log in Button Register Button

Newsletter

Get breaking news, industry updates, product announcements and more.