RNI mechanics keep trucks running in Utah's remote Uinta Basin
Feb 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Charles E Wilson
Rugged and remote, the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah offers some of the most demanding operating conditions faced by any tank truck fleet. However, the region also contains vast natural gas reserves, and the fleets are there helping the production companies that are tapping those reserves.
It takes an outstanding maintenance program to keep trucks, tractors, and tank trailers operational in the harsh mountainous terrain where the natural gas fields are located. RN Industries (RNI), a 10-year-old vacuum truck fleet based in Roosevelt, Utah, has built just such a program.
“Good maintenance is critical because our customers count on us to provide consistent, on-time service no matter how demanding the conditions may be,” says Roger Chapman, RNI president. “Much of our work is off road in a tough area that is very hard on our trucks. The driving conditions beat up truck frames and suspensions. The few dirt roads in the area are topped with shale that eats up tires. Winter driving conditions can be especially brutal with snow, ice, and temperatures below zero.
“To deal with that operating environment, we built our maintenance program around an aggressive preventive maintenance effort. We have an outstanding maintenance team at shops that are strategically placed around our operating area. We run durable vehicles that are custom-specified to handle the conditions in this area.”
Gradual evolution
Both the maintenance program and the vehicle specifications now in place evolved gradually over RNI's decade in business. The company started with four vacuum trucks in 1999 transporting fresh water to rigs drilling natural gas wells and hauling away briny, oily water for disposal.
“The gas fields were just beginning to boom, and it was a busy time for us,” says Dale Price, who has been with RNI since it started and is now general manager. “We added three more tank trucks a year later, and we have been growing steadily ever since. This company really started growing at a fast rate around 2002.”
The boom times continued well into 2008, but operations in the gas fields have slowed along with the rest of the US economy. “We're not as busy as we were last year, but we've still got work,” Chapman says. “We saw last summer that the pace of growth was likely to slow down. Oil and gas boom times come and go. We're in this business for the longhaul, though. Energy resources fuel growth of the US economy, and we believe the future still looks very promising.”
Today, RNI runs about 100 vacuum trucks and 100 tractor-trailer vacuum transports. The company also owns several hundred frac tanks that pump mud and other solutions used in the drilling process. RNI leases the frac tanks to the drilling companies.
Wide range
The fleet operates across a wide area, serving customers throughout much of eastern Utah, north into Wyoming, and east as far as the western range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Water accounts for most of the loads, but the fleet also hauls some drilling mud.
