For your trucking business to thrive, you must have trucks working consistently and reliably. If not, your operations could suffer significant downtimes resulting in loss and unsatisfied customers when your trucks suddenly stop working. Besides, your competition could easily wing your customers when you keep disappointing them with breakdowns and delayed delivery.
Luckily, you can avoid this through effective maintenance of your trucks. With constant inspection and routine maintenance checks, you’re confident your trucks will work smoothly and become a reliable asset to your company and significant help to your clients. The following are a few tips you should execute to keep your trucking business rolling:
1. Ensure Your Truck Is Clean
Your trucks are a moving representation and advertisement of your business.
Thus, you must make them look shiny and sharp as they move around neighborhoods transporting customer goods. This applies both to your interior and exterior.
Your trucks must have a clean interior so customers can trust the safety of their goods there. Your interiors must be neat if you deliver food or other perishable products. Cleaning also removes dust and dirt from your exterior, ensuring your paint lasts long. While at it, don’t forget to clean your undercarriage.
Moreover, you don’t have to worry about a cost-effective way to clean your trucks.
You can get fast and effective cleaning tools at dpfpartsdirect.com or similar stores. With these tools, you can have your trucks clean and dry in under two hours, and you even get training from a professional cleaning technician.
2. Change The Engine Oil Constantly
Oil is a significant part of truck maintenance. Oil lubricates the different moving parts of your truck’s engine. The engine components move, and the friction needs to be mitigated by the oil; otherwise, the excess heat could overheat the parts and severely damage them. To avoid engine problems, you must check your oil level and change it constantly.
Replacing an engine is expensive, and the downtime of its failure cripples your business. Hence, you must constantly lubricate it with oil. Remember, oil comes with other benefits, like guarding the engine against corrosion and removing any contaminants that would destroy the engine. Oiling is also an excellent way to optimize truck operations and avoid costly repairs
3. Inspect The Engines Regularly
Your truck engine should be your most significant focus because engine problems could easily ground your truck. So, inspect your truck for decreased power, excess smoking, and oil pressure. If you see any of those, your engine is at risk of damage, so enlist the help of professional truck repairs.
However, be careful when choosing your truck repair service. Look for one with certifications, a good inventory of engine parts within your location, and offers reasonable prices. If you can’t find it yourself, ask for recommendations from people you trust, like friends, family, and those in the trucking business.
4. Check The Trucks’ Batteries Often
The battery powers the starter so your truck can function well. While a battery can work perfectly for some time, this period can be shorter if you don’t perform regular maintenance.
The battery gets affected by changes in weather, normal wear and tear, rust, loose clips, and electronic demands. You need to check your battery and repair it early before it goes to waste for a minor issue you’d have fixed cheaply.
The following are some maintenance measures for your battery:
• Ensure the battery hold downs are working and firmly hold the battery in place. • Vibrations on the road can damage the battery.
• Use charging adapters and screw them onto the stud to ensure good lead-to-lead contact.
• Clean the terminal connections thoroughly to remove grease that reduces its charge acceptance.
• If you have drivers, have them check the battery every morning before they drive off. This way, they can avoid getting stuck on the road or causing accidents.
5. Check The Truck Tires
Tires carry the weight of your truck, so you have to ensure they’re well maintained and pump them sufficiently and check the tread life. The thread of your tires ensures your truck is well aligned and the wear and tear is even.
Inspect the tires to know whether they’re still in good working condition or if you need to replace them. Remember, your truck won’t move anywhere if you have a flat tire. Additionally, checking your tires regularly is essential for the following reasons:
• It ensures that there’s no diminishing in the fuel efficiency of your truck.
• You get to save money.
• You can identify other underlying problems during your routine checks.
• You can prevent accidents from occurring due to negligence.
• Tires are an important part of the truck’s operability. You have to check their state constantly to avoid any loss of life and injuries from accidents. Tire maintenance is an essential responsibility, and it helps you develop cost-effective ways of replacing them one after the other.
6. Inspect Your Brakes
Your trucks need to be able to stop safely when the drivers need them to. Brakes wear out after some time, so you need to inspect, replace, or fix them. Completely worn-out brake pads could cause road accidents, whereas not repairing them makes them produce bad sounds as you drive. To avoid this, inspect the brakes as regularly as you can to adjust their performance.
7. Prevent Truck Body Problems
The outer body of your truck is exposed to harsh conditions that could damage it and make it tattered. Things like rust caused by chemicals, salt, and corrosion destroy the body and make it unappealing.
You can avoid this by preventing or slowing down such adverse effects. Regularly paint the truck surface or use a clear coat to protect the truck’s metal surface.
Likewise, wash the truck often to remove door jams and ensure dirt doesn’t accumulate and eat through the paint attacking the metal surface.
Conclusion
Owning a trucking business means keeping your trucks in perfect condition.
Maintenance is a great way to prevent damage and have your trucks running smoothly. Implementing the above maintenance tips helps keep your trucks in the best shape possible and your business rolling. Other than that, they make it simpler to identify minor issues early before they become a significant problem, and you can initiate repair early.
