Reducing Fleet Alignment Costs with Mobile, Rack-Free Technology
This episode highlights how Allpart Supply’s mobile alignment and frame‑measurement systems help fleets cut costs, reduce liability, and improve maintenance efficiency by making accurate, technician‑friendly alignments possible anywhere.
Episode 367: In this episode, Jamie Irvine talks with Jon Barganier and Spencer Wilson from Allpart Supply about the hidden costs and operational challenges caused by truck and trailer misalignment and frame issues.
They explain how misalignment leads to excessive tire and fuel expenses, premature wear on suspension components, and even driver fatigue, while also creating major liability risks for fleets. Jon and Spencer describe how Allpart Supply’s mobile alignment system differs from traditional rack‑based setups by allowing accurate alignments anywhere—without pits, level floors, or large shop space—and how this reduces downtime, labor, and liability for fleets.
They also discuss their 3D frame‑measurement technology, the often‑overlooked importance of trailer alignment, common misconceptions from fleets, and the extensive training and ongoing support they provide to ensure technicians can perform alignments quickly and effectively.
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Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine
Welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. And in this episode, we’re going to be talking about one of the most overlooked and probably one of the most expensive types of fleet maintenance. We’re going to talk about alignment and frame issues. My guests today are Jon, Vice President at Allpart Supply, and Spencer, Sales Director of the Heavy Duty Alignment Division at Allpart Supply. John, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.
Jon Barganier
Thanks for having us. Glad to be here.
Jamie Irvine
Spencer, happy to have you on.
Spencer Wilson
Thank you, Jamie. I appreciate it.
Jamie Irvine
For listeners who might not be familiar with Allpart Supply, can you give us a bit of a quick overview of your company, who you serve, and how alignment and frame measurement fit into your overall solution?
Jon Barganier
So in 2005, we started as a DBA to Trinity Sling Corporation. Trinity Sling works primarily in oil field construction type business. At the time, we were providing a lot of raw materials and actually making cables for lifts. So in 2005, as the marketplace in lift manufacturing shifted, we started Allpart Supply as a way of supplying basically lift parts for any two post, four post, in ground lift that that’s out in the marketplace. A couple of years later at a SEMA show we met and we had a booth next to and met the guys from Haweka in Germany and that meeting went really well. We realized there were a lot of synergies between our two companies and what came out of that as a relationship that’s lasted 2007 until now. And while we don’t have any ownership between each other’s companies, we are literally joined at the hip and we are more than a partner. They’re like family. And we really started with the wheel balancing adapters with them for, you know, the entire marketplace. So anything from passenger light truck to medium duty to heavy duty adapters for balancers. And over time, they made an offer for us to get into the alignment segment and it was the right time for us to. And we jumped in 2015 and I took about a year Americanizing the product before I really released it. And in 2016, Spencer was one of my first customers and he took it and ran with it and did a fabulous job with it. And then, you know, over the time we started talking to each other and we started bouncing ideas off each other. How do we do this? How do we make this work? And one day he called me and said, you know what? I’m tired of turning wrenches. I want to do something else. And I couldn’t hire him fast enough. And it’s literally been the best thing we’ve ever done with this company.
Jamie Irvine
Spencer, so you were a technician. Were you working at a fleet or a repair shop or what was the type of company you were working for?
Spencer Wilson
So I was actually partners in a commercial truck shop here in the Dallas area. So we did everything. We were motor overhauls, just anything and everything to do commercial trucks and then had a big, you know, mobile presence as well. So when the opportunity came for the system, we jumped on it.
Jamie Irvine
So in that previous role, you would’ve had a lot of exposure and time working with people who were responsible for fleets because you were doing and handling the repairs for them. In your experience, what is the kind of situation that a lot of them are facing when it comes to things like misalignment or undiagnosed frame issues? Like how does that play out and what is it costing them?
Spencer Wilson
Some of the most expensive things for fleet are tires and fuel. And alignment affects both of those greatly. The one that I think isn’t talked about enough is driver fatigue. When you have a truck or trailer that’s misaligned, the driver can be fighting that the entire time they’re behind the wheel. and it really just wears them out.
Jon Barganier
And especially the trailer, you can see a lot of times when you’re driving down the highway, you can literally see the trailer kind of being pulled along at an angle, and you know that the alignment’s just completely off from the tractor to the trailer. And that’s why it’s a really important aspect of truck maintenance, trailer maintenance, to make sure it is aligned properly, and probably once or twice a year.
Jamie Irvine
And beyond the fuel and the tires, does the wear on parts extend into suspension, wheel end, all of those other components as well?
Spencer Wilson
It will prematurely wear out everything. You know, when the factories are building this and the engineers are designing it, it’s all set to be in a specific spot on that truck or that trailer. So when you have a misalignment, you are, you can be putting pressures, pressure against the leaf springs, the bushings, the dog bones, airbags, you can just prematurely wear out all the suspension components as well.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, so the cost adds up really quickly. What’s the most common reason that there is this misalignment? Is it strictly from collision? Is it from just regular wear and tear? Like what’s the predominant causes of misalignment?
Spencer Wilson
The roads.
Jamie Irvine
The roads. Really.
Spencer Wilson
We have potholes that can swallow a smart car. I think a lot of it has to do with roads. trailer aspect, if you look at certain fleets, the driver will own the truck, but they don’t own the trailer. So if you can sit at major intersections, not on the highway, and you can watch how many trailers are bounced off of the curbs all day long. Some of the neighborhoods, if we go to the moving industry, some of the neighborhoods that these guys are having to go into were never designed for a semi-truck to come down there. So they’re having to ride up over a curb. They’re having to do some stuff in their truck that the neighborhood wasn’t designed for and the truck wasn’t designed for.
Jamie Irvine
See, I would have immediately assumed, I mean, you guys are in Texas. I’m in the Texas of the North in Alberta. I would have assumed, okay, this is probably more of just a vocational issue if you’re out, I’ve seen what loggers and oil and gas field roads are like, they’re brutal. But you’re saying that even the people who are over the road because of either drivers not caring about the trailers or just road conditions in general, that that’s a big contributor to them and they’re falling victim to this as well?
Spencer Wilson
Yes, sir.
Jamie Irvine
My wife’s cousin moved from upstate New York back home to Alberta recently, and they drove last summer. So they crossed, I don’t remember how many US states and Canadian provinces it was, but it was a substantial drive across the continent. And they said that the roads were the worst between Edmonton and where we live in Edson the last two hours of their drive. And let me tell you, we’ve got some bad roads here. So when you talk about losing a smart car in a pothole, that resonates a lot for people who drive on Alberta roads. So your alignment system is notably different than a traditional rack-based solution. Talk me through the predominant differences in your system.
Jon Barganier
Okay. So ours is anywhere, anytime. We can literally set up our system anywhere from in the bay, going bay to bay to bay, or we can break it down, take it into a parking lot and use it. We can take it to a fleet and use it at their site. You can literally do an alignment anywhere with the system in any type of weather condition, in any type of environment. You name it, we’ve been in all of them. And I’ve seen even more with, you know, with our relationship with Haweka globally where the system’s being used. And it’s really that anywhere, anytime that it’s not, it doesn’t require the pit, doesn’t require the rack, doesn’t even require level floors. We can literally do it anywhere, anytime. The other thing that really stands out with it is that the system, all of the measurements are going off the center line of the frame, which replicates what they’re doing at the end of the line at the truck manufacturers. So Daimler, Paccar, International, Volvo, Mack, all of them, when that last alignment test goes with the truck, whenever it’s been manufactured before it hits the road, all of those are going through an alignment process and that alignment process is based on center line of the frame. So those two things are really things that help set ours apart from anybody else, because it’s just so easy to break it down and take a really highly sophisticated system into the field and do alignments anywhere. So in 2019, we passed a MSA test, which was a very stringent, long, full day of eight different trucks, eight different alignments. Everything had to repeat, repeat, repeat in order to pass this test. And we did it with Daimler Truck North America. And that basically put us on the map, right? And from that point forward, we’ve been able to grow and sustain the business quite a bit.
Jamie Irvine
Spencer, how does that translate into measurable cost savings for the person doing the work, but also the end user customer?
Spencer Wilson
So end user, we’ll jump to that one first because that’s the easiest one in my opinion. The end user, if they are taking their truck or their trailer and they’re going to send it over to a shop for an alignment, they have the cost of a driver and somebody to follow them over, bring them back. They have the liability. So the liability is a big one for me is once you leave that yard, your liability for an accident, for anything just increases. So that’s a big one. If they can cut that down, they can, they’re saving immediately from having to pay for a driver and a, you know, non-CDL driver to follow them over. So that’s for fleet, that’s the big bonus for them. As far as a service side, when we were using it mobile, it was the same thing, we can go to a customer’s yard and do two, three, four, five, six of them in their yard. We’re also identifying anything else on the truck. You know, if it needs to be repaired there, we can do it there. If it’s something more major, we schedule it to bring it back to the shop to do the repairs. But just getting to the yard, the customers appreciate that a lot.
Jamie Irvine
When I was getting ready for this interview and I was preparing that question, in my mind, I thought of the things like the time savings and everything that goes along with being able to do it right there in the yard, but I hadn’t considered the liability side of it. I mean, in a worst-case scenario, if you had a motor vehicle accident involved with that commercial vehicle and there was a fatality, and then, I mean, they rip those trucks and trailers apart, right? They are looking for anything to point to that the vehicle was not safe to try to put the liability back on the commercial owner of that vehicle. And this is where the nuclear verdicts and stuff come from too, right? So I hadn’t considered that, but that would be a major, major concern.
Spencer Wilson
It’s probably one of the biggest things we talk about with fleets, you know, when we’re talking about people picking them up, just that liability. And a lot of people, I think when Jon and I are out talking with everybody, I think that’s a lot of people’s eyes get really, really big when we talk about liability with them. They’re not considering that, and I think they should.
Jamie Irvine
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Gentlemen, I appreciate you taking some time to talk to me a little bit about what makes your alignment tools different, that mobile aspect of it, being able to do it anywhere. Can you walk me through, like, what is the time frame to do alignment like that? You mentioned you might even do three or four in a day. So just kind of maybe, Spencer, walk me through the steps of how it works. I’m curious about that.
Spencer Wilson
You know, the biggest thing you’re pulling up to the customer’s yard, one of the most important things is what we call a pre-alignment check. So Allpart Supply, we put one together, we work with our customers. The pre-alignment check is super, super important. That usually takes more time than the alignment does, you know, if you’re doing it thorough. If you look at it like a DOT inspection, we’re gonna look at that truck or that trailer, just like we’re doing a DOT inspection on it, because if the truck or the trailer, if they’re not in working condition, they’re not gonna hold whatever we’re gonna try to do on the alignment. So that’s the biggest thing. Now, setting up the equipment and just, you know, taking your time to get the readings on a three axle truck. You’re, you know, you’re probably in that 10 to 12 minute range, just leisurely, just leisurely kind of, you know, not in a hurry or anything like that. Then it depends if you are doing, you’re gonna probably do tow on the steer axle, you’re gonna do out of square, maybe offset on the drives. So, you know, all in an hour or less, if there’s, bigger things, caster wedging or something needs to be done, you schedule that usually to come back to the shop.
Jamie Irvine
Wow, that’s fascinating. I wouldn’t have thought that it was that quick. That’s pretty cool. Jon, beyond alignment, you also offer frame measurement with visuals. Can you explain to me what the traditional method was and how your tool goes a step above that?
Jon Barganier
Sure. So like most other systems in the past, you’ll get that 2D representation, but the limitations of it was it didn’t necessarily pinpoint exactly and give the type of detailed information. that we can give with our 3D representation using the system so that it really gets in and really dives into the areas where the deviations have occurred so that you really can dial it in where the corrections need to be made using our system in the 3D level.
Spencer Wilson
What our equipment does, it’s a quick check for the frame. So years ago, insurance required that they have a printout of the frame and any areas that might be tweaked and that had to be submitted prior to any approval. So with the system, the CMC 4000, you can do a quick check on the frame. There are eight different views you can pick to see, you know, deviation from center, deviation of height, if we have a twist here or anything along those lines. So it’s just a quick check that they can submit to the insurance and then afterwards be able to hook up onto their frame machine to do the bending.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, so is this typically found at a dealership or just a collision repair shop, or who’s the user of that more often than not?
Jon Barganier
Yeah, dealerships that have body shops, they’re all involved, and anyone that’s doing body shop work, framework. Outside of a dealership, yeah, that’s who the customer would be.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, I can imagine the enhanced view with that three-dimensional information and then being able to really pinpoint. I can imagine people who are doing collision repair and also the insurance companies really love that information.
Jon Barganier
Especially the insurance companies, because it really drives the point home that, yeah, this is certainly a problematic area and it helps the customer get what they want to get out of it too, through the insurance companies.
Jamie Irvine
So I kind of want to move on to, I’m thinking of a fleet’s perspective. I imagine most fleets are outsourcing the alignment work and this kind of repair. So when you break down the economics, why do fleet operators usually, like what are the costs that they’re accruing and how does your system help them reduce their cost?
Jon Barganier
It’s like Spencer talked about earlier. You have the cost of, I need to have a driver there, I need to have a driver back. I’ve got all kinds of liability concerns. What fleets don’t understand is that you don’t have to have the huge investment into an alignment system that traditionally people have required by having to have that rack, by having to have that pit, by having to have specific areas for doing an alignment, whereas, you know, space becomes, there’s not a huge amount of space in a lot of fleet service shops. So a lot of them right off the bat are going, I need, I don’t have enough space to do an alignment. And the first thing we say is, yes, you do, because you don’t need that same kind of space or that same kind of required or designated area to do alignments. We can do it anywhere. We can do it anytime. And I just don’t have that same footprint in the shop with our system that you do with other systems.
Jamie Irvine
When you were talking about the attitude sometimes of drivers towards their own trucks, which they’re responsible for paying for, and someone else’s trailer, would you say that trailer alignment is often overlooked, maybe more so than truck alignment?
Spencer Wilson
Trailers are the most overlooked piece of equipment in any fleet in the country, in my opinion. You can see it, like Jon was saying earlier, just drive down behind them and you can see them dog tracking off of the truck. You know, talk to a driver. How much of the logo can you see in your driver’s side mirror? Well, I can’t see any of the logo. How much can you see of the logo on the trailer and the passenger side? I’d see the whole logo. They’re just overlooked.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, so that’s a big opportunity, especially when you start to think of the liability like we talked about before, for fleets to kind of wake up to that or open their eyes to that blind spot. You work with dealerships, you work with national service chains and fleets. When you go out and you’re educating people about this, what are some of the common objections and the pushback that you get?
Spencer Wilson
I think like Jon was saying, you know, they always say, well, we don’t have enough space or, you know, we don’t have the level of technician we think that we need. But when we go out and we bring our equipment, we do the demonstration, we, you know, we always ask for the techs that might be using it to be in the demonstration. We want them to see how tech friendly the system is. We want to see, let them see, you know, the space is not really what they thought was going to be required. And that’s it. It’s usually just the pushback, you know, on space.
Jamie Irvine
So a little bit of education goes a long way.
Jon Barganier
It does, yeah. But space is a big one. But Spencer also mentioned techs. I was just on a trip last week, and I think I heard that everywhere I went, that I would love to be doing alignments, but I can’t find anybody to do them. And with our system and what we have found is we can pretty much train anybody to get in there and do it. Now, there might be some of the mechanical parts that take them a little bit longer to pick up, the deeper mechanical parts, but we can get people trained very quickly on doing a proper alignment in no time at all. So that is another big selling point for us when we go out and we talk to people because I understand it’s hard to find techs right now and shops go through them like candy, but we always have that next guy coming up. Right. And there might be a little bit of a lull period before he really starts to pick it up like the guy that preceded him. But once he picks it up, he’s flying and that shop’s back up and running.
Jamie Irvine
And what investments have you made in the way of helping these companies to educate their people on how to do it?
Jon Barganier
We have training videos on our website, but we spend a lot of time going to customers. So, for example, if a customer has a training workshop, we’re going to be involved with it. And we have several customers that have exclusive sites just for training throughout their company. And we participate in every one of those as often as we’re invited. So if it’s quarterly, if it’s twice a year, we’re always going to be there because even guys that have been using the system for a while and are really familiar with it, it does not hurt for them to come back in and get a little bit more education once in a while. And there might be some things that they’re overlooking that during these training classes, that we can pick up on and get them going down the right road again.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, it’s so important to have the virtual assets and to have that available, but there’s just no replacement with getting boots on the ground and working together on something, right?
Spencer Wilson
You know, hands on continuing education is a big thing. Just like Jon said, we are very involved with our customers on the continuing education. Trucks and trailers are not getting any simpler. They’re getting more and more difficult. And even as a team here at Allpart Supply, we are constantly trying to educate ourselves on newer suspension that’s coming out. You know, tires, just anything in the industry, we’re trying to stay on top of it as well.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, that’s one upside to working in this industry, right? You never get bored. There’s always something new to learn.
Jon Barganier
There’s always something new. Yeah.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah. So, Jon, let’s end our conversation with this one question to you. If you want people to remember just one thing about our conversation today, what’s that one thing?
Jon Barganier
So I would say for us, for our company, it’s service. Our product begins and ends with the service and the follow up. You know, like we were just talking about the training classes and the ongoing education classes that I can’t get enough of. Like anytime someone gives us an opportunity to do a training class, we’re there, which, you know, probably drives Spencer crazy because our schedules are full enough as it is. But anytime there’s an opportunity for us to do continuing education, we are there. So I want that to be a part of it, stay on top of the education and realize that it is a never-ending process, that you don’t work on alignment for a few years and you’re the expert and you know it all. That is never the case. There’s always something new to be learned. And that’s probably the biggest thing to take out of it. But on top of that, our service and how important that is to our company.
Jamie Irvine
You’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and we’ve been speaking with Jon, Vice President and Spencer, Sales Director of Heavy Duty Alignment Division at Allpart Supply. To learn more about Allpart Supply, visit allpartsupply.com. Links are in the show notes. Jon, thank you so much for being on The Heavy Duty Parts Report.
Jon Barganier
Thank you.
Jamie Irvine
Spencer, glad to have you here.
Spencer Wilson
Thank you, Jamie. I appreciate it.
Jamie Irvine
We talk about fleet profitability all the time, and in a lot of cases, this is won or lost in the areas that don’t always get the most attention. And so I think that alignment is a perfect example of that. When fleets can control their costs, they reduce things like tire wear, things like suspension, eliminate unnecessary costs and exposure to liability, which can be absolutely devastating to a business. So if you’re responsible for keeping trucks and trailers on the road, I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode and come back to listen to The Heavy Duty Parts Report because we cover subjects like this all the time. Thank you for listening and watching right to the very end. And as always, I want to encourage you to be heavy duty.
