Motrec, a small-town electric-powered service vehicle builder meets the largest transit authority in the western hemisphere. Thirty years ago, a company was started in a backyard garage with the idea of building electrically powered service vehicles of exceptional quality. One hundred and ninety years ago, the Long Island Railway began train service across Long Island into downtown New York City. Since then that railway grew into the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) which carries almost three billion passengers a year throughout the greater area of New York City. To do so requires 2,429 rail cars alone (not including subways or buses).

To service and maintain those heavily used rail cars requires a whole lot of resources including service vehicles. Motrec saw its opportunity when they heard that the industrial service vehicles charged with emptying the sanitary tanks on all those MTA railcars were having premature rust failure due to the corrosive nature of what they were pumping.

Enter Hot-Dip Galvanizing and Duplex coatings. Despite using very high quality (and very high priced) paint systems these vehicles were experiencing very premature corrosion that added to maintenance costs and downtime as well as important service life reduction. While this specific and very challenging application highlighted corrosion failure it also became evident that many other vehicles were suffering from corrosion from everyday issues like paint abrasion and de-icing salts.

The decision was made to Hot-Dip Galvanize the entire vehicle chassis and then add a paint system to provide the maximum benefits of a Duplex Coating. The benefits of such duplex systems are well-known but worth mentioning; 1.5 to 2.3 times the durability of the combined total of both the Hot-Dip and paint systems as well as ease of paint repair and unlimited appearance options.

However, the challenge to Hot-Dip a very complex one-piece chassis with intricate tubular sections and lots of distortion inducing checker plate is hard enough but adding a duplex coating makes surface quality standards even more strict. Careful cooperation between the fabricator and galvanizer resulted in detail design changes that optimized the end result in terms of both cost and quality. While getting that first one right is critical there is no viability without the ability to replicate the result every time. To this end the galvanizer had the benefit of their proprietary galvanizing control system that flows information seamlessly from the client to the galvanizer’s technical department right down to shop floor operators thereby insuring that the precisely proscribed methodology is followed and documented every time at every step of the galvanizing process.

This new “super durability” option has great potential for Motrec to not only satisfy the MTA and its millions of daily commuters but also presents endless opportunities in airports, hospitals, large industrial factories and mining operations that have challenging environments. The importance of close cooperation with the manufacturer and the ability to control every aspect of the galvanizing process are the keys to our industry growing into the vital OEM marketplace.