Clik here to view.
How Am I Driving? How To Protect a Company – And Potential Customers – From...
Shortly after 2:30p.m. Tuesday, March 22, 2011, Joshua Morris, 32, lost control of a cargo van owned by his employer Dara Toy Company, of Macedonia, Ohio. The van swerved out of the northbound lanes of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Strange, Bloody (and Oddly Mundane) World of Crime Scene Cleanup
Field jobs are generally dirty jobs. Techs encounter cramped spaces, ancient cobwebs, and years of accumulated dirt and grime on a daily basis. But how often are they dealing with blood and, ahem, body...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Afraid of Heights? Well, Don’t Become a Wind Turbine Technician
When one of its 170,000 wind turbines around the world breaks down, Southwest Windpower does what any good manufacturer does — it gets a field tech out there to check it out. But the company sends its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fed Report Contains Good News for Tradesmen
The past four or five years have been a particularly painful time for many people in the trades. A dramatic economic recession, followed by a slow and grueling rebound that seemed to favor...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Four Tips to Keep Rock Star Service Techs On Board
Top-performing field service techs are hard to find – and even harder to keep. They have that rare blend of technical expertise, sales prowess, and top-notch professionalism. And with their uncanny...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In Too Deep: Behind the Scenes with a Deep-Sea Robot Technician
A lot of workers worry that their job may some day be performed by a robot. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to be able to send a machine into a dangerous spot in place of a real-life person — like deep...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Report: Services Sector Growing, But Employment Still Slow
The service sector of the U.S. economy showed some encouraging signs of growth in July, a study released Friday shows, although employment numbers from the same study — as well as the Labor Department...
View ArticleClik here to view.
SmartVan Roundup: Choosing the Right Service Contract for the Job
Nobody likes paperwork, but contracts are the backbone of any service organization: They lock in customer relationships beyond the point of sale and drive consistent revenue. How do you craft...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Field Service Roundup: SolarCity & Fleetmatics Go IPO, World’s Toughest...
Every week we run across dozens of interesting news items, blog posts, tweets, white papers, market data and trends — all tied to field service in one way or another. We don’t have time to cover them...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to Fix a Ski Lift (and Other Lessons from Leitner-Poma)
Leitner-Poma, one of two major ski-lift manufacturers in the world, maintains 430 lifts across North America, New Zealand, and Australia. The trick to keeping all of them running smoothly? A...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What It Takes to Build a Professional Sports Stadium
When Canadian ice hockey player-turned-coach Pat Curcio visited San Francisco’s historic Cow Palace in 2011 for a show, he realized he could make his dream of owning and operating a professional hockey...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Oscar Mayer Keeps its Weinermobile Fleet Connected
Ensuring employees are connected and supplied with all the information and materials they need when they’re in the field is a common concern for field managers. But what if those employees are driving...
View ArticleClik here to view.
3 New Tech Tools for the Wired Service Technician
Hybrid service vans, tablets in the field, mobile apps, GPS tracking … field service may have waited a while to catch up to the 21st century, but it’s on a roll in 2013. In recent months, new products...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Homebuilder Confidence at an 18-Month High
Finally a bit of good news out of the construction industry. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo index of builder confidence came out this week, sitting at 21, which is the index’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Travel the World, Repair Flight Simulators: SmartVan’s Job of the Week
Welcome to this week’s edition of the SmartVan’s Jobs of the Week, starring Terrell Owens, Michael Jackson, zipping around in a fighter jet, and piles and piles of cash. … Well, not exactly, but each...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Get Back on Track, Literally: SmartVan’s Job of the Week
For the newly unemployed, life can sometimes feel like a train wreck. In which case, the best advice we can give is to straighten things out a bit, get back on track, and keep chuggin’ along. And in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Be Sure to Follow SmartVan on LinkedIn!
We know a lot of our readers are big LinkedIn users, and for good reason. There are several incredibly useful groups dedicated to field service on the networking site, and it’s a fantastic virtual...
View ArticleLive From Chicago!
Just a quick reminder to our readers that the SmartVan is in Chicago this week, at the Service Council Annual Symposium. We’re going to be covering the most interesting and useful tidbits coming out of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Top of Good Service Organizations Lies at the Bottom
Are we entering the era of the customer-run business? Well, no, not literally. But it was clear from a good number of discussions and talks at the Service Council Executive Symposium, which concluded...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Amtrak and iPhones: Welcome to Today’s Tickets
A centuries-old method of transportation is getting a modern day makeover. On Monday, Amtrak announced that it had started using iPhones to scan passengers’ tickets, shelving the familiar hole-puncher....
View Article
