Truck fleet manager designs dream truck
Stacey Nelson always knew she was one of only a few females to manage a fleet of utility trucks, and recently, she got the chance to share her expertise on a national level.
The former senior fleet manager at Black Hills Energy in South Dakota was asked by Ford Motor Co. to come see how its 2017 Ford Super Duty is built at its Louisville, Kentucky, plant. After that, Nelson spent six months traveling to different Ford locations, where she got to test-drive the truck on the company’s proving grounds and design her own Super Duty with all the features she has always dreamed of having on a work truck.
“It was a neat opportunity to see how a truck is made from the ground up,” Nelson told American Gas. “All the safety features are amazing.”
For her design, Nelson chose the spacious SuperCab model with 4x4 and added features to make the truck perform better in extreme conditions, she said. These included a medium-duty battery, skid plates covering the transfer case and fuel tank, rear wheel well liner, front and rear mud flaps, and engine block heater.
That’s pretty impressive, considering Nelson confesses that she didn’t know the difference between an F150 and an F250 when she began at Black Hills Energy eight years ago. Her specialty was continuous improvement, and she used her skills to standardize the Black Hills fleet, she said.
Nelson, who never dreamed that a national motor company would one day ask her opinion on trucks, said Black Hills Energy will buy the Ford Super Duty with the features she selected in the coming year.
“We buy more Fords because they offer a gaseous-prepared engine, and we run on gasoline and compressed natural gas,” said Nelson, who is currently senior program manager, continuous improvement at Black Hills Energy.
Nelson said she came away with a greater appreciation for trucks in general and for how they are made and tested. For example, the tailgate of the truck was tested by putting the truck in a zero-degree chamber for two weeks with the tailgate dropping every 60 seconds. “I had no earthly idea they tested so much,” she said.
Nelson was one of five real-world heavy-duty truck customers invited to design their dream Ford truck. The project creates a “cheat sheet” for other fleets in heavy-duty industries, according to a Ford Motor Co. news release.