Susan Still has managed thousands of mobile vendor repairs. They span Texas, Missouri, Kansas, and Indiana, multiple employers, and every failure a car hauler can produce, from burst coolant lines to hydraulic blowouts.
Her verdict, after all of them: "They're my first call everywhere throughout the country."
The endorsement is an operational one. Susan has used Truckup since before she joined her current company, and she calls almost daily, most of it routine maintenance rather than crisis.
Key Findings
- Susan Still manages car haulers at Hansen & Adkins across Texas and the Midwest, equipment whose ramps and hydraulic systems most repair vendors will not touch.
- Her working ceiling for a truck out of service is two hours. Past that, the scheduling problems start compounding.
- A burst coolant line 30 miles outside Kansas City: the technician had what he needed to diagnose it before arriving, collected the part en route, and the truck was rolling within an hour of the breakdown starting.
- She routes work to the technician who knows her fleet rather than the nearest one, once driving a truck roughly 250 miles from St. Louis to Kansas City to reach him.
A Two-Hour Ceiling on Downtime
Susan is a fleet manager at Hansen & Adkins, a car-hauling operation, where she oversees trucks from Texas through the Midwest: Kansas City, Springfield, Joplin, Indianapolis, and several Texas locations. Her working limit for a truck out of service is two hours. Past that, the scheduling problems start compounding.
The test came 30 miles outside Kansas City, when a coolant line burst on one of her haulers with the driver on the shoulder and the load at risk. Christopher, the Truckup technician who regularly services her fleet, had the information he needed before he arrived, picked up the correct part en route, and made no return trips.
"The truck was rolling within one hour of the breakdown start," Susan said. Not one hour from the tech's arrival. One hour from the breakdown. "It reduced downtime and kept the driver safe by getting him off the road quicker."
Why Car Haulers Are a Different Repair Problem
Car haulers carry systems that standard freight trucks do not: "car hauling ramps and hydraulic lines, hydraulic hoses that your normal trucks don't have," as Susan describes them. A tech unfamiliar with the equipment can misdiagnose a pressure issue as a pump failure, or order the wrong grade of hose and turn one breakdown into two.
That is why the same-technician model matters to her operation. Christopher knows her trucks and their recurring systems, coolant and hydraulics included, which is what makes a one-hour turnaround possible on specialized equipment.
The value Susan puts on that familiarity shows in how she handled a hydraulic issue on one of her St. Louis trucks: rather than hand it to a shop she did not know, she drove it roughly 250 miles to Kansas City to put it in front of Christopher. "I didn't want somebody randomly messing around with my trucks," she said.
What Earns the First Call
Susan's criteria, refined over years of vendor experience, come down to performance inside her two-hour window, consistent quality across state lines, familiarity with specialized equipment, and reliability proven over years rather than promised up front.
"Knowledgeable, trustworthy, fair pricing, timely," she said of the team she calls first. "They're just an all-around great team."
She does not make her company's purchase decisions, but she makes its operational ones. "I have good resources," Susan said. "And they're one of them."
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