Who ya gonna call?

It’s Friday afternoon and you get a call from your field/service technician about a Hotstart heater not working. Who ya gonna call? Typically, we can handle most customer field issues over the phone with a quick call to either our team in Spokane, Washington or Houston, Texas. But there are a few field issues that require more in-depth, in-person examination to fix the problem. Did you know Hotstart offers field service support? In those instances, we hit the road and bring our technical expertise to the customer.

Hotstart has been servicing customers onsite for many of our different markets for years. Our offerings for the rail, marine, power generation, hazardous location, and energy storage markets can range from simple external mounted tank heaters to more complex systems that require more attention and experience to troubleshoot. We’ve crisscrossed the United States and Canada numerous times visiting customers to work with maintenance teams to help get their systems working. We’ve traveled to Japan to help install and validate heater applications on freight rail switcher locomotives. How far are we willing to travel to help a customer? In terms of miles, Inner Mongolia – 5,379 miles from Spokane. In terms of hours traveled one way – 30 hours to Ulan-Ude, Russia from Spokane. For that trip, it was also 30 hours travel time for the tech to get home!

Jason Cook, Market Manager, traveled to Inner Mongolia to do service work on our heaters installed on one of the largest excavators in the world.

For the longer distance trips, it takes a few weeks to plan out what the service trip requires. Communication with the customer on what exactly is happening with their heating system is crucial. We’ll troubleshoot as much as we can from Spokane, and once we know what needs to happen onsite, essential parts are gathered and shipped to the customer. There isn’t always a NAPA parts store right around the corner when you’re at the top of the world. When our tech is ready to travel, they confirm with the customer scheduling and availability of their maintenance team and equipment. It can be a long way to travel only to unexpectedly find a machine is still in service.

Kohner Thames regularly works in the field servicing installations on compressor sets or oil rigs in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

For more local trips, our techs can respond quickly when an issue arises. Early in 2021, one of our service technicians, Kohner Thames, visited with a large gas compression company at three of their facilities – Kermit, TX; Eunice, NM; Jal, NM – to troubleshoot existing explosion proof heating systems that needed some attention. Over two days, Kohner diagnosed issues with seven different heating systems that ranged from bad elements, failed flow switches, blown fuses, undersized plumbing, and electrical components. When Kohner saw other engines and compressors onsite that didn’t have any heating solutions, he quoted systems for the customer to consider for optimizing their operations. "I genuinely enjoy working with our customers in the field to keep their heating systems working effectively and efficiently," said Kohner. 

With this trip, Kohner was able to fix the issues, but sometimes multiple trips are needed if the scope of the service was more than we realized. For our Hazardous Location customers, being based in Houston means we are within a day’s drive to several gas compression production sites. This is also helpful for our customers because we can also provide onsite training with their maintenance teams.   

One of the main goals of our service work is to make sure the customer has what they need to keep their operations running. “If we ever have a Hotstart issue, I know that I can rely on Kohner and Pat to respond quickly and to always go above and beyond, keeping our best interest in mind when looking for a solution,” said Tyler Spradlin of A G Equipment Company. “It is always a pleasure to work with them.”

So who ya gonna call the next time your phone rings about a heater issue? The Hotstart Thermal Management Service team!  

Pat and Kohner are ready to help you in the field - Odin will hold down the fort while they're out!