The life span on your truck or trailer is affected by a multitude of different factors. The best way to ensure you get the most out of your equipment is to perform regular maintenance. Taking the time to do this will reduce fleet downtime, increase safety of the operators and provide peace of mind when it comes to the condition of your trucks and trailers.
Best Practices
1. Routine Maintenance Inspections
In order to understand the condition of your equipment, you have to establish a baseline standard. This standard allows to you to assess if the condition gets worse. It will also allow you to compare the new performance to old performace after repairs.
These inspections need to cover all of the main parts of the truck;
Motor - running condition and any parts that are becoming worn
Transmission - running condition, strange noises, shifting condition
Tires & Brakes - condition, material depth (tread and pad)
2. Rountine Truck Service
Although these machines are a lot different than our standard vehicles, they share many common service points. These common items include:
Various Filters - replace cabin air filter, engine air filter and fuel filters
Engine Oil - change both the oil and oil filter at the manufacturers interval
Various Fluids - check coolant/anti-freeze, brake fluid and transmission fluid
3. Understand Seasonal Changes
Out in West Texas, we prepare out vehicles in ways that endure the harsh heat and do things like swap fluids that have a highger tempurature rating. However, a major drawback of using high-temp rated items is that the low-temp range is sacrificed. It is important to inspect your equipment between big season changes and ensure that everything is appropriately setup for the expected conditions.
Why Perform Regular Upkeep?
Increase the equipment reliability and overall performance
Ability to plan for costs/repairs
It is far easier to slowly set money aside for a placement part over time than having an emergency expense.
Removes the headahce surrounding the condition of your truck
Found the issue, now what?
There are a lot of different options when it comes to performing trucking maintenance, repairs and replacements. A few of the things to keep in mind are:
Aquiring parts and service from a reliable source.
Sometimes the cheaper alternative is enticing when those cart totals seem to never stop growing. However, spending $50 instead of $400 on a part now could end up costing you hundreds, if not thousands later down the line.
Look for any active warranties on your equipment.
The truck or trailer itself might not be under warranty anymore, but that doesn't mean the specific equipment isn't warrantied either. A part may offer a 10 year, 20 year or lifetime warranty. While the truck only offers a 5 year.
It might be worth it to look towards new units.
This is the hardest piece to get over when dealing with heavy machinery for a lot of reasons. There is a point in every machine's life when it is beginning to cost exponentially more to run and repair the unit instead of replacing. Whenever that point in time is is up to you.
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