Inside the Fleet Management of Springfield Township with Gene Irvin

Sophie Eden: 0:34

Hi, Gene.

Gene Irvin: 0:35

Sophie. Good morning. How are you?

Sophie Eden: 0:36

Doing great. How are you?

Gene Irvin: 0:38

I'm doing good. Thank you.

Sophie Eden: 0:39

Thank you so much for doing this interview today. First, can you start off introducing yourself and Springfield Township and what you do here?

Gene Irvin: 0:48

Sure. My name is Gene Irvin. I'm employed here at Springfield Township for about 11 years. I'm currently the fleet supervisor. We're in charge of the entire fleet here. Everything with wheels, everything without. The guys bring it to us, we fix it. Hopefully not that often. I've been using Municibid now for about six years, since 2017. I've had quite a bit of success with it. Right about now we're sitting at like $330,000 in sales, with no cost to us.

Sophie Eden: 1:16

Fantastic. And when you say like you're managing all the fleet, that's police vehicles

Gene Irvin: 1:22

Police vehicles, we have refuse department the regular highway department, which is you know, heavy duty trash trucks. We have heavy duty plow trucks for salting operations. We have the medium duty trucks, you know, for everyday operations here in the township. The police cars, we have 14 police cars in the fleet that we have to take care of. And then all the other essential equipment, the weed whackers, the blowers, everything else that you can think of.

Sophie Eden: 1:49

Yeah. Can you tell us a bit about Springfield Township? What's it known for? What's its claim to fame?

Gene Irvin: 1:55

so Springfield Township has a lot of little cool things if you get out and around. There's an old quarry that filled in that's now one of our parks. It's, it's completely filled in with water. There was a storm, I don't even remember when it was, back in the 1950s. It knocked the pumps out, so it flooded out. And the township acquired that. There's a, Stotesbury used to be a, a big estate back in the day. I can't remember the guy's first name, but he was a big architect. He built the Stotesbury Estates as well as the Linwood Garden Estate. And that's the guy that actually, the grandson perished on the Titanic. I'll shut that off. You're right because the compressor will probably come on.

Sophie Eden: 2:38

For everyone listening. We're with a Gene in-person and we're in Springfield Township's vehicle maintenance workshop. They have a beautiful facility here. Okay.

Gene Irvin: 2:50

So there's a lot of old cool history in it There's actually up and when more some of that Stotesbury Estates is still up. They bought it build a bunch of townhomes in it and the old fountains and some of the old walls and the gardens are still Standing.

Sophie Eden: 3:01

Wow. That's amazing.

Gene Irvin: 3:02

so pretty cool.

Sophie Eden: 3:04

What do you love the most about your community here?

Gene Irvin: 3:07

I mean, I guess there's a lot to love. I mean, it's it's very small here It's six miles radius Just shy of 20,000 people. So A lot of, you can walk to everything and anything. And if you can't walk to it, it's a five minute drive. Like, literally it sounds like an old country thing. But it's, it's the truth. It's very small here. A lot of little community things. We got community day coming up here the first week of October. That's always a good thing. That's down at one of our other parks. But I mean, I've lived here in this township now for about 29 years.

Sophie Eden: 3:37

What would you say is a like little known fact about Springfield Township that people visiting might not know?

Gene Irvin: 3:45

So Springfield is actually, Springfield Township is actually William Penn's gift to his wife. Back in the 1600s or whatever that was, 1700s. Yeah, that was his gift to his wife, was Springfield Township.

Sophie Eden: 3:59

Wow, that's a pretty unique gift.

Gene Irvin: 4:01

that's pretty cool.

Sophie Eden: 4:03

Very neat.

Gene Irvin: 4:04

Yeah.

Sophie Eden: 4:04

Do you have favorite season here in Springfield Township, or favorite project that you've worked on here? There's

Gene Irvin: 4:11

favorite season is the summer. Just, I'm not a cold weather person. But there's always something to do here. The summer I just enjoy because we're outside. All the guys are outside. That's when the trucks get the most use is the summer. All the projects going on, paving projects, park projects. Again, cutting the grass at all the parks. That's my favorite time of year here. Right. And I'm not complaining with that. No,

Sophie Eden: 4:39

Why do you think it's important for municipalities to sell their government surplus?

Gene Irvin: 4:46

So once we started using Municibid, we realized how what a good return we were getting on our equipment. We were taking it to a private auction. We were paying fees that were quite high. It seems like everybody jumps right on our stuff because they know it's been well maintained. I try and sell everything with all the service records and history. Everything that comes in there, what I allow them to look at it, inspect it, read through the records and all the records leave with them. Like I said, I just think we're getting a very good return with Municibid.

Sophie Eden: 5:15

And can you tell us about your maintenance system for the vehicles?

Gene Irvin: 5:20

Sure. So we mean, so what we do here is everything. Mostly everything gets serviced on hours because it's so small, the township that we don't really get the miles on the vehicle. So we do everything on a 300 hour service. For people that don't know anything about hours, GM and Ford and all the manufacturers for every hour. It's 33 miles. That's how they do that equation. So we'd service everything by the hours. We got a couple vehicles that we do on mileage. You know, we have a chief that has a take home car, so that car normally gets a little more miles on it. Like the public works foreman here and the director they do a lot more driving than most of the guys here, so those get done on miles instead of hours.

Sophie Eden: 6:03

And can you tell us a bit about, like, your day to day here and like, what's involved with maintaining a fleet?

Gene Irvin: 6:10

So, the day to day here is really not set in stone because you can come in and have the whole day planned. So, here's the story for you. Yesterday, we're in here working, and one of the drivers calls us with a trash truck. When we went out, the trash truck was on fire, the inside of the truck. So we had to dump it out in the parking lot. We had to get the fire company out to put the fire out. So that took your whole morning day to day operations and threw it right out the window. Because that took us until about 11 o'clock in the morning.

Sophie Eden: 6:36

wow.

Gene Irvin: 6:36

I mean normally we try and plan, look at what we got the night before. Right now we're doing all the winter maintenance equipment. We'll get them in, inspect them, change the oil, get the plows ready and put them away. So. We do have a kind of set in stone day to day, but you never know. The guys come in, the belt's off the truck, whatever it is. I mean, there's always something to do.

Sophie Eden: 7:01

Yep, you're there whenever something

Gene Irvin: 7:04

we're here to put the fire out. Literally.

Sophie Eden: 7:08

I hope that's not a common occurrence.

Gene Irvin: 7:10

it not. It's only the second time I've been here for 11 years, so.

Sophie Eden: 7:15

Okay, that's pretty good.

Gene Irvin: 7:16

Right, that's good, I'll take that.

Sophie Eden: 7:18

what were some of the challenges that you faced with selling your surplus prior to using Municibid?

Gene Irvin: 7:26

Mostly it was the fees that we were getting charged. I went to one of the auctions one weekend, and one of our trucks came up. It was the next one on the bidding block,

Sophie Eden: 7:36

And this was an in person auction?

Gene Irvin: 7:39

It was over in Norristown, and when they brought the truck up for bid, the the auctioneer went into how the frame was cracked, and this and that, and said how the truck was in really bad shape, and none of that was true. So that's when I decided we had to find somewhere else to do that. And we had been looking into Municibid in like 2016. And it took me about a year for them to convince them because that's the way it's always been done is you went to this auction. So we actually sold the public works director's car, Tahoe, on there the first time. That went to another township, to another public works director. And right from there we didn't turn back. Like, we got a great turnover on it. And the director was happy, the director at that point. And we never went back.

Sophie Eden: 8:21

That's wonderful to hear. Did you or the committee approving you know, using another auction service, have any hesitations about using Municibid or any concerns about making the switch?

Gene Irvin: 8:34

Like I said, the director that was here at that time was a little hesitant. Just because, you know, he was an older school guy. And that's how we always did it. You sold it at this auction. That's what you did. You drove it over there, dropped it off, and you waited to hear. You didn't even know how much you got to it. got for it till like three weeks after the auction when they sent you what it went for their cut and they sent you the checks like so it turned into a no brainer once he saw that we didn't pay any fees and again like i said i think we're getting great prices for our vehicles so at that point it never became a hesitation we have to get everything approved through the commissioners for the sell the vehicle and once commissioners Got wind of where it was trying to sell them. Everything was just, they approve everything right away now without a problem.

Sophie Eden: 9:17

That's wonderful. So it's been easier process now.

Gene Irvin: 9:21

yeah,

Sophie Eden: 9:22

That's great to hear. And what would you say, like, of the items that you've sold over the years? Which item have you got, like, the best return for?

Gene Irvin: 9:32

So we had a 2000 Ford F 350 bucket truck here. They purchased the vehicle back in 2007 for$21,000. We sold it in 2021 for a$20,500. So

Sophie Eden: 9:48

Woo!

Gene Irvin: 9:48

Literally they lost 500 hours on the truck that they used for what, 11 years?

Sophie Eden: 9:54

That's brilliant.

Gene Irvin: 9:55

it was great. And a guy drove all the way down from Martha's Vineyard. It shows you everybody's looking at the site. He drove down from Martha's Vineyard, picked it up and, and took it back. And I've never heard a bad word about it. So we've had people as far as Ohio come pick up Vermont Erie. We had a young lady come out from Erie and pick up a Tahoe. It was an old police car. I tried to explain that to her, but she got here and she cried. I was like, oh no. And she was so happy with the vehicle, she

Sophie Eden: 10:21

Oh.

Gene Irvin: 10:22

was, I didn't know what to do. She literally walked in the shop and started crying. And I looked at the other guy I work with here, Will, and I said, is she crying because she's upset? And I said to her, her name was Faith. I said, Faith, is there something wrong? She goes, I love this car. I'm like, okay. So it was pretty good. I've met a lot of. Interesting people and had some interesting conversations on the phone for people bidding on the vehicles. It's a good experience.

Sophie Eden: 10:49

Because that was her first time seeing the vehicle in person because she was traveling so far. Yeah.

Gene Irvin: 10:55

Yeah, I think she said it took her like seven hours to get here.

Sophie Eden: 10:58

Wow, that's a haul.

Gene Irvin: 10:59

Yeah.

Sophie Eden: 11:01

that's amazing. And it sounds like it was even in better condition than

Gene Irvin: 11:05

Yeah, I mean, again, we try and stay on top of everything. We do everything in house here. Like I said, with the service intervals, we're always on them. Like I said, right now with doing all the winter equipment some of them may actually not be due for the oil change, but because it's been since last year, we do the oil and go over it, adjust the brakes and do all that just to make sure they're ready.

Sophie Eden: 11:24

what are some of the regular maintenance that you do for the police fleet?

Gene Irvin: 11:29

The police fleet is, it's mostly tires, brakes, oil. Fortunately the fleet's relatively new. We rotate the cars every five years. That's why we have so many of them on Municibid. Right now we're transitioning over to hybrids. So the services have really gone farther out. Like the service interval has become longer in time because it takes them that much more time to get 300 hours on it than it used to when they'd leave them idling for, whether it's cold out or whatever. The cars now that, you know, because it's all hybrid, it's running on the battery instead of the engine.

Sophie Eden: 12:01

is the whole police fleet moving to hybrid or are you doing, okay.

Gene Irvin: 12:06

So the commissioners in the, you know, in the well, future is for everything to be electric here, but I mean, that's years upon years away. We do upfit all the police cars here in house. So it's nice. Like, you know, when the, when an officer comes in, he's having a problem with the computers. Usually the modem needs to be rebooted. They don't know where that's at, but we do. So it's nice.

Sophie Eden: 12:29

Can you think of what your best experience using Municibid has been?

Gene Irvin: 12:35

I guess everything because I can't come up with a bad experience. Jackie has been a great help for me. She's helped me with a lot of little issues. She's helped me with one right now. But always her with support for me. I'm sure she's with everybody, not just me. But I like to think I'm getting a special treatment sometimes. But yeah, so I think every experience I had, have had with Municibid since the start has been awesome. I've not had any Nothing bad with Municibid. So I guess that's how I'm going to answer that for you.

Sophie Eden: 13:05

Jackie's awesome. I'll let her know too. Yeah, she loves all our sellers. She really cares deeply, yeah. Have you had any experience with Municibid that made you laugh? Oh, yeah,

Gene Irvin: 13:17

I mean, well, that one there with Faith picking her car up from Eerie crying. I wasn't sure. I do get a lot of them. Some of them I'll get on the phone for a while. I'm like, all right, let's, you know, let's get to the point what you want. Don't tell me what you're going to build it as and You know, 35 minutes into the conversation, I'm like, what do you want to come look at? They're like, no, I don't want to look at it. I'm like, okay. So now it's, there's definitely been a lot of funny phone calls. A couple of the in person things have been kind of funny. But yeah, I mean, no bad experiences. So I think the, the probably the greatest impact is the higher return on our products that we're getting instead of running it through the auction. You know, getting a lot, a lot of money for the vehicles to go back into the tax base improvements around the building and stuff.

Sophie Eden: 14:00

features that you like about Municibid? To is

Gene Irvin: 14:05

well, I mean, I guess the best features are that you basically run your own auction. Like you guys set it up for us, but we put in there everything from start date, to end date, to pickups inspections to look at the vehicles, phone calls. I mean, I think that's the best part of that.

Sophie Eden: 14:23

Yeah, so you're able to list items you go.

Gene Irvin: 14:25

so when we had the auctions, you had to have it there by a certain date. You dropped it off and then, like I said, you waited to hear what you got for it, or whatever.

Sophie Eden: 14:33

Yeah, and when you were using in person auctions before, like about how long would it be from when you'd taken a vehicle out of service to put up for auction to when it actually, like,

Gene Irvin: 14:45

So their auction was only two times a year. So you had vehicles sometimes sitting around here for six, seven months, until you actually got to take it there. And then you took it there, you dropped it off. Like, it was a big yard, so you actually dropped it off with, with the auction. A thousand other vehicles just sitting out in the yard and you waited to hear what you got for it to where here we have control of the whole situation.

Sophie Eden: 15:08

less depreciation time of the vehicles too.

Gene Irvin: 15:11

That, and like I said, I think that when they realize that the vehicle is here at a municipality, that they know that it's been well maintained, it's not just been, you know, it's not some homeowner that didn't take care of their vehicle that got dropped off at the auction and waiting to see what they can get for the vehicle.

Sophie Eden: 15:27

The vehicles that you're maintaining, what would you say is like an average amount that you're putting into the vehicles,

Gene Irvin: 15:35

Cost wise, you mean? So I mean,

Sophie Eden: 15:37

Right. We

Gene Irvin: 15:38

probably the biggest cost is the trash trucks with brakes and, you know, the brake drums. Being that we're only six miles radius here, they're always on and off the brakes, so they go through brakes quite often. But we don't have any really big costs, high costs. I mean, most of us all, like you said, tires, brakes, oil changes you know, belts, hoses. Just regular maintenance stuff that gets maintained more often because it's used more often here than your regular residence car.

Sophie Eden: 16:08

sometimes with the police vehicles, like a common concern with bidders is that they're kind of being run into the ground and getting like very heavily used. You're seeing these vehicles every day, and you're looking under the hood with them. what's your take on? whether or not they're getting abused, so to speak.

Gene Irvin: 16:27

So I think it all depends on where you're at as well. You know, we're close to Philadelphia, their cars are getting abused. We're here, our cars aren't getting abused. I mean. It's an everyday car. That's what you're trying to explain to some of the bidders that, you know, a lot of them have a lot of hours on them that may not have as many miles as they think are on them. But the cars here are surely are not abused because we're such a small township.

Sophie Eden: 16:49

And like for some people, used to just buying a car from a dealership, not used to dealing with hours. Do you think they should be, really concerned about, high hours on a vehicle?

Gene Irvin: 17:00

So I, I don't think you'd have to be concerned. I always express and I put in, you know, the auction to how many hours are on it, but I always put in there, they've been serviced regularly. I mean. On the gas cars, we were dumping the oil out of those cars every two and a half to three weeks. That's how, that's how quick that would happen. Like I said, now that we're over to the hybrids, it's getting stretched out farther, but the engine's not sitting there idling as much.

Sophie Eden: 17:25

With moving your police fleet over to hybrid are you excited about that transition

Gene Irvin: 17:32

I was a little leery about it when it first happened. So the first one we had had its issues because it was the first model year. Had a bunch of little issues and it was kind of frustrating. But as we've moved on It's, it's turned into a, other than the service work being longer, we're not working on them every two weeks, three weeks, as far as that goes. But they just did a study that over a two year period, they saved 33,000 gallons in gasoline in the 14 vehicle.

Sophie Eden: 18:01

That's phenomenal. That's a big cost

Gene Irvin: 18:04

that's a big cost

Sophie Eden: 18:05

right? Because the servicing, would you say is about the same cost to maintain

Gene Irvin: 18:11

Yeah. It's the same. Yeah. All the oil and filter is the same, whether it was the gasoline, not hybrid, and now they're the hybrid with the same gasoline engine. It's just now the gasoline engine's not running as much, because it's running on battery.

Sophie Eden: 18:26

That's brilliant. That's a huge cost savings.

Gene Irvin: 18:28

So, yeah, very big cost savings. And like I said, the service intervals have gone. We just did two cars the other day and we checked how long it's been. It's been two months since we had them in. But in that two months we have to, so the hybrids were starting to switch over to mileage instead of hours. So you have the regular gas car in 300 hours would go about 1,600 to 2,000 miles. So now the hybrids are going 4,000 miles that we're doing them on, but they're only going 150 hours.

Sophie Eden: 18:58

Wow.

Gene Irvin: 18:59

so it's cut it down dramatically.

Sophie Eden: 19:02

That's brilliant.

Gene Irvin: 19:03

so it's definitely a big cost savings for the department.

Sophie Eden: 19:07

One concern with the, electric vehicles overall has been, the batteries and the potential for fire. I know you have some experience with fires, but how has it been so far with the hybrid vehicles and the batteries?

Gene Irvin: 19:23

So far we haven't had any issues. The one that I was saying, the first one, that actually had to have a battery done, but it was under warranty. So, my only concern for the future is what we do with those batteries. And nobody seems to have given me an answer on that yet.

Sophie Eden: 19:37

be determined.

Gene Irvin: 19:38

To be determined, right. They tell you you don't have to worry about it for 10 years. I say, well in 10 years, what do we have to do with the battery?

Sophie Eden: 19:43

hmm. Yeah. Well,

Gene Irvin: 19:45

that's my only concern so far.

Sophie Eden: 19:47

Yes, we'll find out in 10 years.

Gene Irvin: 19:51

Right.

Sophie Eden: 19:52

Would you recommend Municibid to other municipalities? If so, why?

Gene Irvin: 19:58

Absolutely, I have. I've had a couple of municipalities switch over to Municibid. On recommendation, they called and asked how easy it was, what was involved, what the fees were, and I explained to them there's no fees. Yeah, I've probably, I've probably got three or four townships to switch over. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a great experience, it really is. It couldn't be any easier, and like I said, it's not costing us anything, it's great. Yeah.

Sophie Eden: 20:23

crazy to hear that you were getting charged with the other in person auction as well as the buyers. But yeah, astounding.

Gene Irvin: 20:31

that's pretty crazy.

Sophie Eden: 20:33

What advice do you have for other municipalities who are looking to sell their surplus or maybe looking to just get started with that process?

Gene Irvin: 20:43

I mean, anybody that's not using the site is really missing out. I know there's a couple other sites out there, but we've had nothing but good luck on this site as far as auctions going right away. Yeah, anybody that's not using the site's missing out. If anybody's still dropping off at the in person auction it's, it's just losing money that they should be putting back into their budgets.

Sophie Eden: 21:04

Wonderful. Is there anything else overall that you'd like to share, either about Springfield Township or your experience with Municibid? Anytime

Gene Irvin: 21:13

Springfield Township is a nice town to live in, end of visit, a couple of little things. Any, any township that has a question, or again, I think the school district now has switched over and used Municibid for a couple of things because I explained it to them. Anybody that has any questions, I would be more than happy to answer for them.

Sophie Eden: 21:30

Oh, thank

Gene Irvin: 21:31

It's been a great experience.

Sophie Eden: 21:33

Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much, Gene. I really appreciate it.

Gene Irvin: 21:37

Thank you.