By: TrüNorth Global
When your entire business is riding on the safety and performance of your commercial truck, protecting your investment is job No.1. That’s why performing regular maintenance is a critical first step for avoiding unplanned downtime and extending the life of your truck or fleet. Regular maintenance of your commercial asset is critical to extending the longevity of the engine, aftertreatment, and transmissions.
“Performing regular maintenance will aid in extending the lifecycle of your commercial asset,” says Lance Eskridge, TrüNorth Global Vice President of Channel Sales and Development. Preventative maintenance is required to keep your truck/equipment operating at peak performance. Downtime means a loss of income making it important that your truck/equipment is reliable.
Preventive maintenance will help reduce or prevent costly repairs of your transmission, drive train and other components, thus extending the lifecycle of your truck/equipment. A proactive maintenance plan for your engine, transmission and aftertreatment is vital to your truck/equipment’s uptime.
“The biggest problem I see is there’s just not enough attention paid to the preventive side of aftertreatment maintenance,” says transportation fleet maintenance consultant Bruce Stockton. “Fleets tend to wait until a light comes on or the system throws a code. By the time the light comes on, the problem could be such that the truck could be down for two or three days at a remote location. If fleets stayed ahead of the problems, maintenance on the system could be done, along with the regular PM work, in a day.”
If preventive measures are put into place, downtime and expensive repairs could be prevented. Preventive maintenance (PM) can be expensive, however, when you think long-term breakdowns, repairs, and downtime, the cost benefit is on the side of PM.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), created a commercial truck maintenance checklist, it suggests that you should inspect your truck before each trip and then semi-annual/annual tasks. Here are a few tips.
Improper care of your truck/equipment can lead to a host of issues including:
Your maintenance program must be proactive, it is important to stay organized. Categorize jobs/inspections as daily, weekly, monthly and annual. Create a system that will work best for you, this will allow you to stay up to date on all maintenance – which is key as you already have a host of things to remember and complete while completing a load.
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TruNorth Global provides limited liability warranties for commercial medium and heavy-duty trucks, including work trucks, construction and agricultural equipment.