The Boys With the Most Toys

When Steve Plaskos was growing up in midtown Toronto, he and his pals would zoom around on go-carts fabricated from parts scrounged in laneways around their neighborhoods — “they were made from old ironing boards and the like,” Plaskos, 52, recalls. Then — via a stint at Centennial College and an apprenticeship with International — he became a mechanic.

Now, as the manager of fleet services for Canada’s largest city, it falls to Plaskos to spec, purchase, and maintain the mammoth fleet of vehicles used by the municipality in its everyday operations.

The fleet is a celebration of engines and wheels. And PTOs. More than 1,000 vehicles and almost 100 technicians spread over 13 garages.

We’re talking everything from asphalt trailers to Zambonis: Lawnmowers;
A mittful of Smart cars; Some bicycles, for tooling around the shop.
Sidewalk sweepers; Six different types of salt spreaders; Snow-melting trucks.

A sparkling new Acterra, that is a combination chipper/dump.

An aging but serviceable Ford L8000 that works as a sewer rodder. It has a huge hydraulic snake on the front end that cleans out sewers and shoots the gunk into the holding tank out back. It looks like a Dr. Seuss invention.
He’s got about 300 garbage and recycle trucks, and virtually no two are clones.

Some are rear loading. A few have upper and lower chambers out back, and the regular garbage is on bottom and the recyclables go up top. One of his garbage packers uses only biodiesel.

One of the days I visited, Plaskos was on his way to the Freightliner factory in Mexico to oversee the assembly of some new class-8’s that would be called into service as trash haulers.

Because his fleet is on the public payroll, Plaskos
has little wiggle room when buying trucks

Because he’s paid by taxpayers, Plaskos says he has to account for every single penny spent and he has to purchase all his vehicles according to a strict “lowest-bid” system. There’s very little wiggle room.

And, as his colleague Ross Petrini says, “whenever there’s a puff of black smoke that comes out of a city truck, you get a call from an angry taxpayer.”

Another thing that makes Plaskos’ fleet unique is that it’s the result of a marriage of six different municipalities, so he’s still trying to make everything work together. “That,” Plaskos says, referring to the odd collection borne of the merger, “can be a fleet manager’s nightmare.”

Plaskos also has to inspect the city’s taxi fleet. He faces the same emission control regulations the rest of the heavy-duty industry faces.
His shop is unionized to the teeth. You might say he has his greasy hands full.

No wonder Plaskos was named the 2005 Volvo Canadian Fleet Maintenance Manager of the Year, an honor handed out yearly at the Canadian Fleet Maintenance Seminar (CFMS). The only other time a municipal fleet guy won the prize was in 1991, when London, Ont.’s Art Lake was named top fleet man.

Plaskos was nominated by Ross Petrini along with Ed Roeder and Bill Dinino from the Toronto chapter of the Automotive Transportation Service Superintendents Association (ATSSA).

“When we first hired him,” Petrini says, “We’d use him for all kinds of trouble shooting and every time we put him someplace, he gave 100 percent plus. He was always coming up with solutions.”

Not only is technology always morphing (“Mechanics have to be trained almost on a daily basis,” he says.) the industry must brace for a huge challenge. A challenge faced by all fleets.

It doesn’t matter how many garbage trucks you have, if there’s nobody around to fix a blown turbo when it needs fixing. Plaskos says he noticed the pool evaporating when the City of Toronto placed ads for new recruits in local papers.

Plaskos isn’t one to let others step up to solve problems. He is the executive chair of ATSSA’s Apprenticeships and Training Committee. From there, he’s doing all he can to attract new blood to the business.

“Where the industry has to get involved is to encourage students at the high-school level,” he says. He hopes to organize field trips for students to shops as well as OEM plants, where they’ll see how exciting the transportation maintenance business can be.

He has already arranged for high schools to send co-op students to his garages. “It took a lot of work and a few letters to set up, but it’s been a great success.”

When Plaskos won the Volvo award, he was quick to thank Petrini, Roeder, and Dinino for nominating him and he also commended Dan Cushing from Ryder Truck for his involvement in the Motive Power program at a local high school in Scarborough.

But he also issues a challenge to others in the transportation business. “I would like to challenge all fleet managers to get involved, give back to the industry. Our future is today.

“I’m sure at some time in your careers someone gave you the opportunity to get started. Why not give someone the same chance?”

Plaskos also thanked his wife Kita for her patience and encouragement. After all, somebody’s got to maintain the maintenance man.