Magazine for the professional tire industry
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45 www.moderntiredealer.com maintenance solutions portfolio without sacrificing the speed and quality of service that our customers expect from Speedco." Results in minutes Barne expects alignment business to continue to grow at his Fredericksburg shop. He aributes a 5% boost in unit sales and revenue to his new Hunter heavy-duty aligner. Overall, his commercial business is up about 25% over the last five years. "ere is a big demand for truck alignment. It's just geing that word out to let everyone know when you didn't do something for years and you start doing it." ere's another challenge for Barne to overcome. "In my area we have a guy who's using a 50-year-old machine, and he tells people he can do a great job when he really doesn't. You can't align modern vehicles with 50-year-old equipment. It's not going to work. You can get somewhat close but it's not nearly the accuracy or the speed you can do with the modern equipment." A shop using decades-old equipment is not unusual, according to Glaser. "e really old-school guys are still using trammel bars and tape measures, which is a very archaic method. It was abandoned in the early 1970s in the automotive market but there are still quite a few heavy-duty shops where that is common align- ment equipment. When we're talking about a specification measuring down to hundredths of a degree, you can't even dream of that kind of accuracy with that equipment." Modern equipment has transformed HD alignments. But the belief alignments are cumbersome, labor-intensive, and time-consuming persists. Glaser says Hunter has applied what it learned in the automotive market to truck alignment. "Our newest truck system will set up and give alignment readings in three-and-a-half minutes. On older systems, just to get alignment readings used to be a 20- to 25-minute process for the whole truck. If you are spending 25 minutes just to get the hardware aached and set up and ready to go, you'd beer hope you sold the job before you got started," says Glaser. According to McCullough, the quality, usability, performance, reli- ability, and durability of heavy-duty alignment machines have improved tremendously. Bee Line says it has engineered the LC7500 heavy-duty aligner to provide the lowest cost of ownership of any system on the market today. Quik-Link: 800-687-1557 ext. 23117