Should federal agencies with vehicle and truck fleets make greater use of remanufactured automotive parts? Some congressmen, leaders in the Congressional Automotive Caucus, think so.
That’s why they have introduced a bill called The Federal Vehicle Repair Cost Savings Act (H.R. 4056). It would encourage federal agencies to use remanufactured auto parts when they are, in a given repair instance, cheaper and easy enough to obtain, meaning they do not hold up the repair of the vehicle.
It is hard to imagine a more common-sense proposal, given the drive of Congress to reduce federal spending in order to cut the federal deficit. A Government Accounting Office (GAO) report published in 2013 stated that in fiscal year 2011, federal civilian agencies reported about $975 million in maintenance and repair costs for approximately 588,000 vehicles that the agencies owned.
The GAO could not estimate what percentage of those repair costs were for remanufactured versus original repair parts. Agencies do not keep that data, unfortunately. So there was no back-of-the-envelope estimate of what the federal government could be saving.
But clearly remanufactured parts are far from a first choice. General Service Administration (GSA) officials reported that on Jan. 8, 2013, 15 out of 1,037 purchase orders that day were coded under rebuilt.
Tom Lehner, vice president, public policy, the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA), explains that the GAO estimated that remanufactured parts are 25 percent to 50 percent cheaper than OEM parts. So a conservative estimate is the federal government could be saving $250 million. But that is a bit of a squishy estimate.
It assumes current remanufactured parts use is less than 25 percent, which it probably is, and that it could grow to at least 25 percent, which is uncertain, given questions of availability, suitability, warranties and other factors. But there is no question the federal government could save millions of dollars a year, maybe tens, maybe hundreds. But we will never know that number unless Congress gives federal fleet managers a kick in the butt.
MEMA came up with the idea for the bill. It approached Reps. Gary Peters (D-MI) and James Lankford (R-OK) asking them to co-sponsor the legislation. Both have auto part remanufacturers in their districts, so they agreed to head up the effort to pass the bill. But that bipartisan support and the bill's eminently reasonable premise do not guarantee its passage, of course.
The bill was referred to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). Lankford is a subcommittee chairman, so he has some sway. But he has co-sponsored about 160 bills in the current Congress, so it is unclear how much time and energy he is willing to devote to H.R. 4056. Moreover, both he and Peters are running for the Senate in 2014. So they will be preoccupied.
The bill itself is tame. It simply "encourages" the head of every federal agency to use remanufactured vehicle components if doing so reduces the cost of a repair while maintaining quality. If having to wait to get a remanufactured part, when a new one is immediately available, would delay the return to service of the vehicle, then a remanufactured part would not have to be used.
The legislation defines "remanufactured vehicle component as "an engine, transmission, alternator, starter, turbocharger, steering, or suspension component) that has been returned to same-as-new, or better, condition and performance by a standardized industrial process that incorporates technical specifications (including engineering, quality, and testing standards) to yield fully warranted products."
Throwing in the environmental benefits of using recycled parts makes this bill a no-brainer. But it is going to take some legislative brawn to get it passed.
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