Ryder System Inc. on Wednesday officially rolled out a retail mobile maintenance service through which technicians will provide routine, scheduled and federally mandated vehicle maintenance at a customer’s site.
The service, called Torque by Ryder, is available in seven states in the South and Southeast, with Miami and Orlando, Florida, the most recent locations to be launched. The plan is to expand the program’s geography as far as customer demand will take it, said Jordan Wagner, vice president and general manager of Torque by Ryder.
Miami-based Ryder’s customers (NYSE: R) have been asking for this service for some time, Wagner said.
Through the service, technicians will travel to the location of the customer’s choosing, typically a yard where trucks cycle in and out of every day. All of the work will be performed there. The billing is transactional with no long-term contracts. Other than major projects like engine and transmission overhauls, there isn’t much the technicians can’t do, and Torque by Ryder has plans to service electric vehicles in the future, Wagner said.
The technicians and equipment belong to Torque by Ryder. The service does not operate out of Ryder’s shops, so all the supplies are on the Torque by Ryder trucks.
The service is being priced at a premium, but for time-pressed fleets, the time and convenience savings can more than offset the cost, said Wagner.
“You want to bring vehicles to a dealership to be serviced or do you want us to come to you?” said Wagner in an interview with FreightWaves
The service is available to fleets outside of the heavy-duty truck realm such as utility vehicles and light-duty trucks. “The nice thing is that we don’t have a restriction on who we work with on this,” Wagner said.
The ideal customer would be a fleet of 50 to 100 trucks centralized in a specific location where it is cost-effective for Torque by Ryder technicians to schedule the service and get vehicles back on the road in a few hours. That said, Torque by Ryder will work on fleets of any size, said Wagner.
Torque by Ryder is not the first player, big or small, to enter this space. However, Wagner said the market is very fragmented and populated with local or regional players and that Ryder believes there is potential for a national model supported by a well-known brand.