Recognize Your Leaders Submitted by: APWA Fleet Services Committee Nominee: Dan Lutz, Fleet Manager, Operations Division of the Public Works Department, City of Beloit, Wisconsin Leadership Traits: Initiative; Collaboration; Managing Change; Leading a Team
an Lutz, City of Beloit Fleet Manager, has always been involved in the managing of and care for the City’s vehicles. He provides direction to the Fleet and Stores work groups in the Operations Division of Public Works in order to establish efficient and effective delivery of Fleet and Stores services by providing City departments with safe, reliable, economical and environmentally sound products and transportation. The last several years the buzzwords have been “sustainability” and
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“greener technology” which created a paradigm shift. In 2008, as a result of researching hydrogen boosters on the Internet, Dan built and installed a hydrogen booster on his personal 2004 Dodge Ram to see if the technology really worked. His first test drive resulted in increasing his mileage from 11.1 miles per gallon to 21.9 miles per gallon.
In November 2008, Dan became a Certified Technician in the field of this Hybrid and Hydrogen Fuel Technology. He took the results of his personal experiment to Chris
Walsh, Operations Director for the Public Works Department, and asked, “What do you think about running your fleet on water?” By December 2008 the City of Beloit was installing Hydrogen Electrolyzers on a few of their vehicles for testing purposes. In early 2009, the Hydrogen Electrolyzer technology started changing from Wet Cell to Dry Cell configurations. After preliminary testing of the new Electrolyzer designs in a few of the City’s vehicles it was clear that the technology had
