Fleet Maintenance & Operations

Title: Expert Spotlight: Karin Haumann on Fleet Lubrication

Duration: 25 minutes 27 seconds

Description: On this podcast episode of Trucking Business and Beyond, Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella, explores the essential role of engine lubricants. With over 12 years of expertise, Karin simplifies the complexities of engine oils, from the differences between synthetic and conventional options to the innovative technologies behind Shell Rotella's lineup.

[Video Starts]

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

All right, it is time to talk about oil.

Joining me right now is the OEM Technical Manager for Shell Global Solutions, Karen Haumann. Karen, welcome to the program.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Hello, thanks for having me.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Well, great to have you here. We might be one of the few radio shows that really likes to talk about oil.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Okay. Great. I'm in the right place.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Yes, you are in the right place. So we're going to talk specifically today about some advantages of lower viscosity oils in cold temperatures, right?

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Yes.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

All right. How does that work? Tell us.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Okay. Well, I mean, this is a great season for it. It's the dead of winter especially you know in the northern climates and so you know we need to be conscious of our oil selection and what viscosities we choose to be able to help in the harsher climates during the winter time with lower viscosity oils provide you know benefits of extra protection when you're in a cold climate.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

So the idea behind low viscosity is it's going to flow better in these really cold temperatures, right?

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

That's right. So if you think of viscosity as the resistance to flow. So for example, you know, swimming through a pool of water versus swimming through a pool of molasses, you know, there's going to be a significant difference there that you would notice.

So the viscosity, The numbers and the viscosity grade define what temperatures the the oil will flow at and Protect your engine at and the lower viscosity like a 10 w 30 Which is the fastest growing viscosity grade for heavy -duty diesel engines?

Flows better at colder temperatures flows faster gets to the critical engine parts More quickly to be able to provide protection against wear and those types of things.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

You know we talk about low viscosity oils in a in another example we've been doing it for years. Even before the industry started moving towards lower viscosity, the big switch was going from 40 weight to 30 weight. Primarily these 30 weight oils were designed for the newer engines, tighter tolerances. We've always talked about this in the vein of fuel economy.

So let's think about what you just talked about. If you're trying to swim through water, there's some resistance there. Try to swim through molasses and think about how much more energy you would have to exert to get to the other side of the pool.

And that energy would be fuel consumption in a truck. The engine parts themselves have to move through this oil and the oil creates resistance and the lighter the viscosity, the less resistance, so the less energy we have to exert to go the same distance, right?

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

That's exactly right. So, you know, the parts move against each other with a film sickness in between.

The thicker that film is, the more energy input required to get the parts to move against each other. And that energy input is your fuel.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Yes. Yeah, so we've been a big fan of low viscosity oils for a long time on this show. We were experimenting with the 30 weight oils in older engines. And there's some give and take there.

In the older engines, you run these really light viscosity oils. We found that they protect really well, you will probably burn more oil in the older engines. Thinner oil gets past the rings a little easier.

You're going to consume a little more oil. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing in the older engines. The new engines are pretty incredible. You know, I go way,

way back with diesel engines and every diesel engine I ever bought or owned, brand new, rebuilt, didn't matter. they all burn oil. They always have about a gallon every 10 to 15 ,000 miles on a new engine.

And then all of a sudden, we started noticing that these modern engines, they just weren't consuming oil anymore. And most of them don't now, which is pretty incredible.

I mean, that is such a, it took me a while to get my head around that, but we now see OEM engines with 50, 60, 70 ,000 mile oil change intervals.

And when you get to your oil change, you're still full of oil. We're not burning any, even with these really lightweight oils, which is pretty incredible. –

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Yeah, we work hand in hand with the engine manufacturers as they're designing and improving their hardware systems.

We're also designing and improving the oil. So while there, physically engineering out some of these problems, we're also providing oils that have higher performance and really facilitate those improvements, and we add those two together. There's just a synergistic effect that things are much more different than they used to be. For example, you talk about oil consumption. One of the other things that contributes to oil consumption,

I wouldn't say it's as much as oil passing the rings but you know oil volatility so our oils have gotten better and we've gotten lower volatility so there's less of kind of the light ends of the hydrocarbons burning off you know at the same time and couple that with with like you said higher tolerances and better engine design you just get you know just advanced performance.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Well I learned something today. I didn't know this, that some of our oil consumption was actually kind of, direct me if I'm wrong here, is the oil almost like evaporating?

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Some of it is. So we measure, there's a volatility performance requirement in the API standard specification that we have to be below a certain part of volatility.

Oil consumption is a very complex phenomenon. And we don't understand it as well as we wish we did. You're right. Some of it is oil getting past the rings.

I think that's probably the majority of it, but it's even more complex than that. And there is a small part of it where the hydrocarbon molecules, the lighter ends,

they do evaporate off at high operating temperatures and high specific surface temperatures can contribute to that.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Interesting. Well, I'll tell you how far we've come on this. If I go way, way back when I bought my first truck, it did have a Detroit diesel on it, but it was the old style Detroit diesel,

the two cycles, and the joke about that engine used to be when you pulled into the fuel stop, you would fill your oil and check your fuel.

- Yeah. - That's how much oil those things consumed. You were just like every time you stopped, you just pour a gallon of oil into that thing because you figured you'd need at least that much.

And now here we are today, the modern Detroit diesel virtually uses no oil whatsoever, or so little it's hard to measure. That's right. Yeah, that's pretty incredible.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

That's right. It is it is they've come a long way You know part of that is I'm also protecting the after -treatment system The additives that we put in the oil to keep your engine clean keep the deposits down and anti -wear We really don't want those Combustion byproducts being you know deposited into the after -treatment systems So if you use a good quality oil,

high performing that keeps your engine clean, keeps the pistons and the rings clean, and keeps the wear down, then yeah, you'll have very little oil consumption.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

You know, that's another good point, something that we weren't dealing with at one point. And we have a long history on this show of dealing with those emission issues on these engines.

And the mid 2000s when we first started with the EGR mandate, then the DPF, then the DEF,

and we had horrible maintenance problems with these trucks. I mean, it was very disruptive to a lot of companies, took us a long time to figure it out.

We are really past most of that now. I mean, we are now, there was a time where we did not recommend buying a new truck. We said, look, do anything you can not to have to buy one of these trucks.

Rebuild your old trucks. Keep them running till we figure this out. We're there now. You can still buy some trucks that'll give you a lot of problems if they're spec'd wrong. But if you do the right things,

if you're spec 'ing the truck right, operating it right, like you said, the oil quality now matters. Fuel quality matters, everything we can do to keep that emission system clean is a really big advantage.

And I don't think a lot of people realize that the oil plays a part in that.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

The oil plays a huge role in that. If you've got significant piston deposits and sticking rings and those types of things, you're going to be getting an excess amount of oil going past the rings into the combustion chamber. And like I said, the additives that we put in there are designed to stay in the oil.

They're not designed to be in the combustion chamber. And those combustion byproducts can get pretty nasty over time.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Yeah. Now, you're touching on an area that I've talked about for a long, long time. And I've got pretty strong strong feelings on and I've gotten a lot of debates about people with this. I am of the belief after dealing with a lot of engines and a lot of oils for a lot of years that my philosophy on oil is nothing goes into my crankcase except a good quality oil.

I'm not a believer in oil additives. I think in many times they can cause more issues than they ever solve. You just mentioned you've got a team of engineers that have been working on this stuff for decades and you have your own oil additive package that does all the things we need an additive package to do.

To me to throw in some random other additive package in there has never made a whole lot of sense.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

No, and what people don't realize necessarily is the amount of effort that goes into designing these oils.

We have a dynamometer engine testing that we do, and they cover different performance areas which are kind of verifying the performance of different additives,

and so it's a multivariate problem. You've got cleanliness, you've got anti -wear performance and foot handling capability, and the additive package that we come up with is a delicate balance because sometimes one additive to improve one thing will offset the performance of another.

So, for instance, you know, take an anti -wear, those are surface activated, has surface activated chemistry. the oil heats up, that part of the additive package kind of finds its way under the surface of the parts and provides kind of a sacrificial layer to protect the part.

Well, if you start adding different additives, if you add something else that's also surface activated, now your anti -wear is going to be fighting for space against something else.

So, Yeah, you never want to add an additive to your engine oil. The additive systems are so technical and so balanced that you might get the performance you're looking for,

but it will be at the expense of something else.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

That's the way I felt that, like I said, and you mentioned it, the amount of work and effort that goes into that part of the oil formulation,

these additives that all do lots of different things. It's really technical, it's really complicated, and the idea that we're just gonna dump some oil additive in here,

and it's actually going to do something just beneficial is just not true. Like you said, you might get a benefit somewhere, you're probably gonna give up something else,

somewhere else, there's a pretty delicate balance here.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

That's right. Exactly right.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

So I do have one other question. I'm not sure if you'll be able to help me with this or not But I always like to ask We do a lot of oil analysis here.

I my first call today I did an oil sample read it on the air went through the analysis I started doing extended drains on my trucks back in the mid 90s Using bypass filtration.

filtration that allowed us to filter down much finer down to about three microns using a heating element that actually allowed us to heat out some of the liquid contaminants that could get into the oil and then testing the oil to see if it was still serviceable or not and then basing our oil change not on a random set of miles or fuel consumption but basing the oil change on oil condition alone.

Is this oil still serviceable for the engine? If it is, let's leave it in there because it's expensive to keep replacing it, but we have to monitor this. One of the things that has happened in the last,

oh I would say it's been about five years or now, it may have gone back to the last API classification we had, we started noticing one thing about these oils.

the base isn't holding up anymore. These oils are performing really well, but we're actually at a place now where we are having people add base to their oil later on because the oil itself is still completely serviceable except the base has gone down too low.

And we can pretty cheaply add some base and just keep using the oil. But I'm wondering, Is it the fact that our analysis isn't as accurate anymore,

or are these oils coming with less base to start with?

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

When you say base, do you mean the total base number?

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Yes. Yeah. The TBN.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

And what are you adding as, when you say you add additional base, what does that mean?

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

So there are two products I'm aware of on the market, and they are TBN additives.

I mean, the design of this product is simply to raise the base. And what we're talking about, I make a joke all the time that technically you could grind up some tums and put it in there.

I tell people don't take this seriously, but that's really what we're talking about. We're talking about an antacid, something that neutralizes acid and that gets consumed the more acid it has to neutralize the more of that base you're going to consume so this has happened enough now that there are these products on the market we are adding some sort of base I don't know exactly what their chemical composition is but we're adding this to bring our base number back up.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

So a couple of things there and we I just talked about adding individual additives.

But a couple of things there now, the total base number in engine oils has changed quite a bit over the last couple of decades. We used to track base number as it gets depleted and asset number as it gets increased.

And when the two crossed over, that was the end of the life of the oil. That's no longer the rule of thumb. And we can see extended -oiled drain intervals with total base numbers, you know,

down in the twos and tear the engine down and it looks beautiful. So the chemistry has changed and evolved over the years that you can't necessarily measure the serviceability of the oil based on the base number.

The base starting out often is lower, and it can go lower than what we were comfortable with in the past, and that's just-- and I'm not a chemist. I'm a mechanical engineer, but I do know that the chemistry has changed so that the total base number-- and back to that multivariate problem.

We've been changing and tweaking and working on these additives to be able to solve all the problems, and it turns out that just the chemistry used now does not rely as heavily on the base.

Now having said that, so when you're looking at an oil analysis, which you also want to look at in a situation like that on an extended drain is what's your oxidation looking like,

those types of things, and the viscosity area is your oil starting to thicken. And if you wanted to improve the base number, I think you're probably better off draining some of the oil and replacing it just with the fresh oil,

because that will boost your, it'll boost your additives back up, it just kind of brings you closer back to your start.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

It's interesting that you say that. When we first identified this several years ago, there were no additives on the market for this. None that I could find. And our solution was,

look, don't do a whole oil change. Everything about your oil is still really serviceable. We're a little worried the base is dropping a little too low. Drain a couple gallons out, freshen it up.

That's way cheaper. So that's what we used to do. And then I guess somebody saw an opportunity, Now we have a couple of products on the market, but that was always our recommendation,

just drain some oil and freshen it up some.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Yeah, that's exactly right.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Okay, good. Now, and again, I realize you're mechanical, not really chemical.

Based on what I've studied, if we do add some base, it's a pretty simple process. We're not adding a ton. We tell people, you know, don't ever try to get it more than 10,

there's usually a chart on these bottles. And the chart will tell you if you had this many ounces, you should raise your number by this many points. We tell people, get it back up around five or six,

and then check again on your next sample. I haven't been able to find anything that would say that would cause any real problems.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

With the additive.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Right. Right with adding base. I mean, it seems like a fairly simple process and we're not you know We're not adding more than the oil was designed to have we're just kind of replenishing the base Are you aware of any problems that could cause?

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

I'm not familiar with that practice because that's not something that we recommend. You know, I do know at a very high level that the total base number in the oil comes from things like our detergent systems and in different additive systems,

they all contribute to the base number so that it's not necessarily a separate Additive that sounds they are solely to offset acid and so You know because we don't rely on that type of strategy and I'm not familiar with those products,

I wouldn't be able to speak to that. Other than to say, if your base number was down around two and you wanted to bring it up to five and continue on,

I mean, like I said, our preferred strategy would be drain some of that older oil out of there, freshen it up with some new oils, you're gonna add all of the other, the percent and all of the other good stuff that you get on a fresh oil in there that's going to help you also without the danger of offsetting anything performance wise.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

That's a good way of looking at it, that when you drain a couple gallons you're not just getting base, you're getting a freshening of the entire additive package.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

That's right, and the base oil and yeah,

everything, yeah, the capacity Yeah.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Yeah. That makes sense. We may go back to that as our preferred recommendation. Makes sense.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

I think that's the safest strategy, not knowing what's in that additive or what other things could be offset or what performance you could lose. I think the safest way is to just freshen up what you have.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Got it. All right. Well, I've certainly enjoyed this. I've learned some things today. Anything Anything else you wanna share with us? –

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Well, I just wanted to mention since we were talking about low viscosity, we have a new product,

Rotella T610W30, full synthetic engine oil. And so it's designed for the low temperatures. It's also a full synthetic. So you've got really great cold temperature performance and volatility resistance and all of those things that we talked about.

And that's a new product we've launched in the last six or eight months.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Excellent. I think I was actually just questioning somebody about that not long ago. I was wondering if you had a full synthetic 10W30 and now you do.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

We do. And you talked about fuel economy just really quick. I'll give some information for you and your listeners. You can expect to see about a 2 % improvement in fuel economy with a 10W -30 compared to a 15W -40.

So just to kind of give you a little bit of context of what that improvement looks like, just that viscosity change alone from 1540 to a 1030, you should expect to see about a 2 % improvement in fuel economy.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Excellent. You know, one of the things we try to get across to people, we do a lot of fuel mileage testing, a lot of fuel mileage. It's a big issue for us here on the show. Always has been.

I've been working on fuel mileage on heavy trucks for about 35 years. And like you mentioned earlier, the additive package, this can get incredibly complicated.

Trying to track fuel mileage on a big truck, we've identified over 80 factors that could affect your fuel economy. So testing—

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Not the least of which is the driver.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Well, the driver is somewhere around 30 or 35 % of the impact, and that's big. I mean, I can't think of another factor that's one factor being that big,

so you are correct. The driver is a big part of that. But we also try to tell people there are things that will improve your fuel economy that you will never be able to measure in your one -truck operation.

There's just too many variables. And when we hear a number like this, two to five percent, that's proven, but you can't prove that with one truck. That that's proven over millions of miles and minimizing all the variables as much as possible.

But we love when we get a number like that and we know that savings is there whether we can measure it or not.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

That's exactly right. Fuel economy is extremely difficult to measure especially in that range and we have spent millions of miles to you know collect that data and come up with that two percent number and that's when you when you have a large enough data set you can kind of wash out all those variables and see a real number but you certainly wouldn't be able to see that in a single truck.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}
Yeah Yeah, you know, since it is winter and we're seeing some cold temperatures, one of the things I like to tell people to try is take a jug of that,

you know, old -school 1540 conventional oil and a jug of your T6 1030 and go outside, leave them sit outside overnight and then go out in the morning and try to pour them.

Watch what happens.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

That's exactly right.

Yeah. It's pretty incredible. Well, imagine what you're saving on your starter and your battery when you're, you know, when you're starting an engine up cold? Yeah.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

And the, you know, we've always heard that statistic, a certain percentage of where on an engine happens at startup, because the oil's drained out of where it needs to be.

The faster that oil can flow back to those places, the more protection you have, and that old school 1540 at,

you know, minus 10 does not flow very well at all. –

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

That's right. So that first number is a cold temperature number. Now lower that number,

10W, 5W, 0W, the better flow you get at startup. –

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Fantastic. All right, Karin, great information. I love when I learn something.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Okay, great. Well, thanks for having me.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

Well, great to have you. Take care.

{Karin Haumann, OEM Technical Manager for Shell Rotella}

Okay. Thanks, you too.

{Kevin Rutherford, host of Trucking Business & Beyond Podcast}

All right.