How Hi-Lite Airfield Services ensures safe landings around the world with Perk AmTrav
Keeping runways safe for air travel
When you think of cleaning, airport runways aren’t the first thing that come to mind. But every time the four main landing gear tires on a 45-ton Boeing 737 contact the runway, they leave a poof of burning rubber as the tires speed up from zero to 1000 RPM in a split second. That poof of rubber settles onto the runway and hardens into a slick coating – and if too much builds up, incoming aircraft can’t get enough traction to slow down.
Fortunately, in the dark hours of the early morning when passengers are asleep and planes are parked, highly-trained crews from Hi-Lite Airfield Services arrive with big, specialized equipment. Using a combination of chemicals and high-pressure water blasting, Hi-Lite crews clean the rubber from the runways. From the busiest airport in the world at Atlanta Hartsfield to small regional and private airports, Hi-Lite’s experienced crews keep airports in compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration standards that keep planes and passengers safe across the U.S.
The McNeely family started Hi-Lite in upstate New York in 1990 as a roadway markings painting company: double yellow lines, solid single white lines, dashed yellow and dashed white lines, and so on. The company noticed an opportunity in painting airport runways – at the time, no contractor specialized in airfield markings. So in 1995 Hi-Lite took on its first airfield project at Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield in northern New York, adapting its road painting equipment from 3-inch road markings to 3-foot airport runway lines and lettering. Business quickly expanded outside New York, and in 1998 Hi-Lite added waterblasting to the fleet so it could offer rubber removal services to airfields. Now Hi-Lite is the industry leader for runway and taxiway markings, runway rubber removal, surface prep and pavement maintenance.
In the early days, Hi-Lite crews drove equipment in caravans thousands of miles from New York to Texas, Alabama, and across the United States. Crews deployed to projects for weeks at a time, but as the company grew in size and geographic reach, management realized that flying was a safer and faster way to move valued crew members.
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Hi-Lite Airfield Services is a best-in-class provider of runway pavement maintenance services.
Getting Hi-Lite's work crews to job sites is critical work
Today, Hi-Lite’s Julie Hall makes sure crews get to work safely and on time. Julie’s a people person and an organizer: she loved spending time with her children as a stay at home mom, then worked as a teacher’s assistant in a school before joining Hi-Lite. In her tenure with the company Julie has helped out all over the place: doing office filing, as a receptionist and personal assistant, and now handling contracting, purchasing and travel -- she laughs: “I've even gone on the road with the crew to experience that portion of what the teams do.”
Maybe it was joining crews on the road that made Julie so committed to making sure travel is smooth for Hi-Lite’s hard-working crews. “We're a small enough company that we care about our employees, if we didn't have those guys out there traveling, we wouldn't have a job because they do the dirty work -- literally.” The work is tough: “A lot of the guys work late nights, because the airports are quieter at night, but it varies from project to project... we may work 16 hours or we may work four hours.” She says: “I like working with my crews, I fight for them sometimes, we all do, because we know what they're going through. It's a hard job they're traveling and in a hotel for four weeks at a time.”
For Julie and Hi-Lite, looking after crews means crews can do a great job for customers: “We put our customers first. I guess everyone says that, but we really do.” So much so that while “most of our projects come from bids, a lot also comes from word of mouth.”
It takes a lot to get crews where they need to be, handle changes during emergencies, and plan travel to welcome and train new crew members. "It definitely can be time consuming.” Travel is an investment and flexibility is valuable: “We don't fly our guys in basic economy, it's not worth the hassle” Julie says. “Our guys will fly in from a lot of different areas, they're not often from the same location as our jobs, but we will fly them to where our jobs are.”
Partnering with Perk AmTrav makes team travel more efficient
For Julie, Perk AmTrav makes this easy: “With Perk AmTrav, you know where your travelers are right now. I know I'm flying someone from Florida and I know I gotta move him to Mississippi. I can see that flight and it's right there, it's very easy to use and gives me a snapshot of where everyone is. We used Concur before, it was just harder to do pretty much everything.” Julie also appreciates the flexibility to quickly change an itinerary after she’s started shopping and booking, rather than having to start the search over from the start: “The ease of change with Perk AmTrav is really nice, and the booking tool is very easy to use on my smartphone if I need to do something outside the office.”
Working with an Account Manager gives peace of mind
While Julie is looking after her crews, Account Manager Laura and the Perk AmTrav Travel Advisor team looks after Julie: “Working with Laura is great, I have had no issues when I call and seek help because everyone's very helpful.” The Travel Advisor team is ready to help: “I've never been rushed on the phone, and I'm really not on hold ever. Now I come to think of it, I don't think I've ever been on hold with you guys. I don't feel frustrated when I hang up the phone with you. I can't say the same about the other company before -- it was frustrating.”
For Julie, business is personal: “I’m definitely a people person, I loved being a stay at home mom then and I have a lot of connection with my crews, I talk to them all the time.” Today, taking care of her crews and saving time on managing travel means she has more time for family fun: time boating on the lake, time with her children who are now in college, time to work on her house, and time to travel herself.
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