MCHENRY Truck Equipment faced two challenges when LaserVision asked it to build a fleet of trucks to transport the excimer laser and related equipment to participating doctors' offices across the United States: Keep the inside of the van body between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and keep the equipment from being jostled.
McHenry met both challenges, which is why, seven years later, it has 46 custom-designed trucks in circulation to serve LaserVision, which serves more than 700 eye surgeons in 300-plus locations.
The success is closely tied to five St Louis, Missouri-area companies — McHenry, LaserVision, Central States Thermo King, Hewitt-Lucas Body Co, and TLD Concepts — but it also involved a nationwide network including Silent Drive of Orange City, Iowa; Ultron Lift (formerly DEL) of Buffalo, New York; and Webasto Thermosystems Inc of Lapeer, Michigan.
How tough is it to maintain a temperature of 60 to 80 degrees? Tougher than you think.
“(It) doesn't sound like it would be difficult,” says Rikki Bradley, LaserVision vice-president of operations and clinical affairs, “but it's another story when a truck has to deliver the system to a doctor out in Chicago in the middle of the winter.”
McHenry went to Central States for a Thermo King V-280 with a 110-volt standby and to Webasto for a diesel-fired heater with a 12-volt blower motor.
“We put battery backup in there so when the Webasto goes into 110, it will run,” says McHenry sales representative Steve Grimm. “It's a diesel-charged heater, but you still have a blower motor and a thermostat that has to run off electrical current. It's set up to run off 110 as well.”
Steady is the word
To keep the laser equipment from being jostled, McHenry is using a liftgate from Ultron, air suspension from Silent Drive, and roll-on, roll-off transport cart from TLD Concepts.
The liftgate is a 4,000-lb railgate with a 72"-deep aluminum platform. McHenry also removes the rear suspension of the Ford F-550 trucks and installs an air suspension that softens the ride. Custom-made tiedowns are installed in the floor to ensure that the $700,000 laser equipment does not roll around and get damaged. If the excimer laser has to be recalibrated, it comes at a cost of more than $700 an hour — something LaserVision would prefer to avoid.
“A whole lot of things went into designing a truck that would meet LaserVision's needs,” Grimm says. “It was a joint effort. It wasn't something that just McHenry put together by itself. I depended on a lot of people from different parts of the nation.
“It evolved, adding one little thing at a time. It wasn't like it changed dramatically. After two or three years, a lot of small changes were made. Some of it was because manufacturers changed their equipment, so we had to do something a little different to compensate.”
One of the decisions was to go strictly with F-550s, rather than both F-450s and F-550s. The biggest change came two years ago, when McHenry had to switch to a 15' body from a 12' body to accommodate LaserVision's addition of an eye topography machine.
Central States Thermo King has played a key role because it has provided LaserVision engineers with training and instruction on the units. Each year, an engineer brings the truck to one of LaserVision's maintenance facilities in St Louis; Greensboro, North Carolina; or Rialto, California, for annual preventive maintenance. The Thermo King unit receives both preventive maintenance and a thorough inspection.
“I have to give a lot of credit to a lot of people in a lot of other companies for advising me and helping me make this thing come to fruition,” Grimm says. “Without their help, it wouldn't have happened, at least not to the magnitude that it has.
“It worked out for us because we got to build all the trucks. It worked out for the vendors because they get to provide all the different pieces of equipment for these trucks. It took a lot of time in the beginning, but it paid off in the long run because this is a good piece of equipment for LaserVision — something I think they're real happy with.”