Robert Bosch LLC says that back in 2005, independent trucker Jim Miller, was at his carrier’s depot in Detroit, Mich., preparing to head to the West Coast when he was approached by a Bosch representative.
The representative, Joe Frikken, was looking for fleets to test products, and offered to install an about-to-be- introduced Long Haul alternator in Miller’s Freightliner. Miller could keep the alternator to see if it performed and held up as Bosch expected it would.
Miller was happy to get a new alternator. At the time, his 2001 Freightliner had 508,895 miles on it, and he had been having the existing alternator rebuilt every couple of years as a prevention against trouble on the road.
Now, with his truck at more than 1,000,000 miles, the Long Haul alternator has 500,000 trouble-free miles on it, and “for the past seven years I’ve been home free,” Miller said.
“The alternator has performed flawlessly for about 500,000 miles, and it’s still going strong. Bosch recently offered to take it out and replace it with another new one, but I told them I wanted to keep it in there and see how long it will go. Maybe we’ll get another half a million miles,” he said.
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