I just got back from my nightly walk with Kobi. It’s 20 degrees out but we still did 1.5 miles. While we were walking it reminded me of the cold snap we had a couple weeks back.
The first cold snap of prior years bought in a flood of dead batteries. Marginal batteries give out in the extreme cold. Arriving in the morning we’d find the cars that had been towed in during the night and the parade of tow trucks would continue through the day.
That morning I was surprised to find that no cars had been towed in during the night. There also were no messages on the machine. Unusual, but I was sure they were coming. I was wrong, they didn’t come. At the end of the day we had only done three batteries.Maybe it wasn’t really that cold? I called our battery distributor to reorder the 3 batteries and learned their sales were through the roof that day. They couldn’t keep up with the deliveries. Why did we only sell 3 batteries?
I needed to find out why. I knew our customer base had grown so that wasn’t it. A quick look at battery sales for 2009 showed they were up, so that wasn’t it. Another look at the data showed that battery sales used to spike in the extreme cold and extreme heat, I knew that; but in 2009 the spikes were gone. Battery sales were pretty even all year. Very interesting but why?
What happened? In 2008 I made testing the battery part of our regular maintenance service. We use a very accurate, computerized battery tester to identify a worn out battery before it causes a symptom the customer would notice and before it leaves the customer stranded. My goal was to provide a better service. Did I expect results like this? Honestly, I didn’t.
As this case study shows, preventive maintenance works. It saves money, time, aggravation and inconvenience.
If you have your car serviced at a quick lube, ask them to test your battery; they don’t offer this service. If we service your car, you don’t need to ask, we’ll test it at your next regular maintenance service.
