Manager of Fleet Maintenance

Essential Job Summary

The Maintenance Manager – MRF & Heavy Equipment is responsible for leading all maintenance activities for the Newark MRF, heavy equipment fleet, maintenance shop, and related facility infrastructure. This role oversees technicians, mechanics, welders, and administrative maintenance personnel responsible for preventive maintenance, corrective repairs, troubleshooting, inspections, and reliability improvements across MRF processing systems and heavy equipment assets.

Essential Job Functions

• Lead and enforce maintenance safety programs, including lockout/tagout, machine guarding, hot work, confined space awareness, elevated work, contractor safety, shop safety, field repair safety, and safe work practices around mobile equipment and MRF processing systems.
• Serve as the site maintenance safety leader by reinforcing stop-work authority and holding maintenance personnel accountable for safe work execution.
• Ensure maintenance activities comply with OSHA, DOT, DEP/environmental, company safety standards, and OEM requirements.
• Conduct and participate in daily safety meetings, shop inspections, equipment walk-arounds, and safety observations.
• Ensure that outside repairs, contractor work, and vendor service activities are performed safely and in accordance with company policies and regulatory requirements.
• Oversee preventive and corrective maintenance for all MRF processing equipment, including conveyors, screens, shredders, balers, optical sorters, magnets, eddy currents, ballistic separators, air systems, motors, gearboxes, hydraulics, pneumatics, fans, pumps, compressors, and related facility infrastructure.
• Oversee maintenance and repair of heavy equipment and support vehicles, including wheel loaders, excavators, water trucks, skid steers, forklifts, yard equipment, and other mobile assets used in plant and site operations.
• Ensure proper diagnostics and repair processes for hydraulic, electrical, electronic, powertrain, brake, engine, emissions, HVAC, and structural/welding-related systems.
• Plan, schedule, and coordinate maintenance activities across shop, field, and plant operations to support production demands, minimize downtime, and balance preventive, corrective, and emergency repair work.
• Prioritize daily work assignments, reallocate labor and resources as needed, and ensure timely completion of repairs and preventive maintenance.
• Serve as a technical resource for complex troubleshooting, equipment failures, and repair decisions.
• Support emergency repairs, road calls, and production-impacting breakdowns as needed.

Reliability, CMMS & Documentation

• Own the execution of the CMMS/fleet maintenance software process, including asset records, PM schedules, work orders, repair history, backlog management, labor tracking, parts usage, downtime reporting, and maintenance KPI reporting.
• Ensure all maintenance records are accurate, complete, timely, and compliant with company, regulatory, and audit requirements.
• Establish and maintain standard planning and scheduling processes, including weekly maintenance schedules, daily priority setting, and shift handoff procedures.
• Lead root-cause analysis for repeat equipment failures, downtime events, and production-impacting breakdowns.
• Develop and implement corrective actions to improve reliability, reduce maintenance costs, and increase equipment uptime.
• Track and report key maintenance KPIs, including downtime, PM compliance, work order completion, backlog, labor utilization, repair costs, road calls, repeat failures, and equipment availability.

Team Leadership & Development

• Provide direction to mechanics, welders, and administrative maintenance personnel to ensure work is performed safely, efficiently, and to company quality standards.
• Manage daily work assignments, staffing plans, schedules, overtime, productivity, and team performance.
• Hire, train, coach, evaluate, and develop maintenance personnel in partnership with Human Resources and site leadership.
• Conduct performance evaluations, recommend merit increases, promotions, job changes, and corrective actions as appropriate.
• Develop skills matrices, training plans, and succession pathways for maintenance team members.
• Set expectations for workmanship quality, documentation accuracy, safety compliance, communication, and accountability.
• Encourage employee engagement, teamwork, and continuous improvement within the maintenance department.

Budget, Parts, Vendors & Inventory

• Prepare, manage, and control the maintenance operating budget in alignment with company goals and site performance objectives.
• Manage parts inventory, critical spares, vendor relationships, OEM service support, outside repair providers, warranty recovery, and standardization of parts and maintenance practices.
• Control maintenance spend through effective planning, inventory discipline, repair-versus-replace analysis, vendor management, and overtime management.
• Cook up with Operations, Procurement, Finance, Safety, Human Resources, and senior leadership as needed to support maintenance objectives.
• Review outside repair work to ensure quality, accuracy, cost effectiveness, and compliance with safety and OEM standards.