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Excluding the regions of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk
Petro-Canada™ Lubricants' distribution network extends to over 80 countries worldwide
About Winnipeg Transit
Winnipeg Transit is a public transit agency and bus service provider to the City of Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada. Established in 1882 it currently employs nearly 1,600 people, including 1,100 bus drivers who play a critical role in moving almost 170,000 passengers around the city on an average weekday.
The company currently operates a fleet of over 600 buses, with plans to increase this number to more than 650 by the end of 2024. To house its ever-growing fleet, Winnipeg Transit has one of the biggest facilities in North America which covers 36 acres and almost a million square feet.
What makes Winnipeg Transit unique to other public transit operators is that it keeps its own maintenance and servicing in-house, employing 180 dedicated staff to look after its buses, cars, trucks and support vehicles. In addition, Winnipeg Transit is one of the few operators still doing rebuild processes and manufacturing onsite. With such a large group of dedicated and knowledgeable personnel, Winnipeg Transit is committed to providing the best possible service for the people of the city.
Jason Lavoie,
Superintendent of Fleet Maintenance and Procurement,
Winnipeg Transit
(PDF, 236 KB)
Winnipeg Transit’s large repair and maintenance team are focused on keeping its significant fleet on the road and running to its strict timetable to keep the city’s residents, commuters and tourists moving each day.
Historically, Winnipeg Transit used a competitor transmission fluid across its fleet and experienced only minor issues. But as new energy efficient transmissions were introduced to the fleet, with features such as torque converter lock up at lower speeds, Winnipeg Transit’s maintenance team began to have more problems.
As explained by Jason Lavoie, Winnipeg Transit were experiencing a grunting and growling sound from vehicles, caused by premature failure of the torque converter, which resulted in drivers feeling a delay in shifting gear and in some cases slipping out of gear completely. This would require an oil change, meaning equipment downtime and service calls on the road. Winnipeg Transit’s vehicles previously were running up to 10,000 hours before an oil change, but due to the issues experienced when using the more dynamic transmissions, this was reduced to 3,000 hours*. With more frequent oil changes comes more labour hours for Winnipeg Transit’s in-house maintenance team, more downtime and scheduling issues as well as more waste fluid, all things that significantly affect the bottom line.
Winnipeg Transit required a new automatic transmission fluid to stop the grunting and growling noises and keep its vehicles on the road.
*Best practice is to always follow the OEM recommended drain interval.
After nearly three years of regular oil sampling, Winnipeg Transit saw the benefits of using DuraDrive HD Synthetic 668 for its severe duty equipment, experiencing major improvements, including:
ELIMINATING MAINTENANCE ISSUES
IMPROVED OIL DRAIN INTERVALS
** Best practice is to follow the OEM recommended drain interval as well as used oil analysis across the drain to identify any oil issues if they occur. 6,000 hours is equivalent to 100K km or 62K miles for this field trial.
“Anyone running extreme duty
equipment like us should be switching
to DuraDrive HD Synthetic 668 –
you can really increase those oil drain
intervals when you upgrade to 668!
I want to thank the wholly professional
team at Petro-Canada Lubricants that
put hours and hours into this project
to ensure a successful outcome.”
Jason Lavoie,
Superintendent of Fleet Maintenance
and Procurement, Winnipeg Transit
The collaboration saw three innovative companies come together to successfully solve a problem. Representatives from Allison Transmission and Petro-Canada Lubricants were fully involved during the field trial at Winnipeg Transit’s facility, working with its knowledgeable team to ensure that DuraDrive HD Synthetic 668 made the difference. The Winnipeg Transit team knows that if there is any other issue, they know where to turn and look forward to working with everyone into the future.
TES 295® and TES 668® are registered trademarks of Allison Transmission, Inc.