Preventive Maintenance
The best repair is the one that you never have to make and that's where preventative maintenance comes into the picture. There are two big cost factors here. The first is that failing to conduct preventative maintenance will cost bigger further down the line because failing components, left to degrade, will often have collateral impact taking out other systems with them. So one element may be overheating, but by the time it fails totally that overheat will have damaged other elements such as hosing and wiring that will then lead to further failures. Preventative maintenance is less expensive than repair after failure. The second is that failing to conduct preventative maintenance can lead to unexpected down time and if that happens during the course of a job then your semi isn't making money and that can cost in dollars and reputation. All in all it's way better to get your preventative maintenance done by us, than to pay more through neglecting it.
Safety and CVSA Inspections There's no doubt that preventative maintenance is key to the safety of your rig, your load, and yourself or your drivers and no surprise then that all vehicles must pass the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) standards. To ensure that your vehicle or fleet stay well within CVSA standards we conduct full safety checks of brakes, tires, lights, and fluids and recommend that every 5000 miles for trucks. Further PM Checks and Work We will schedule a full preventative maintenance regime for your vehicles going beyond your routine safety inspection and service. These include a download of the vehicle's electronic control unit (ECM) which we then go through finely to detect any potential problem areas. Other tests that we perform at least annually, and often more often include checks on alignment, and scheduled component replacements, and readying for DOT inspection. Trailer PM Preventative maintenance isn't just for your rigs; it's also essential to keeping your trailers running right. Normally there will be three month and six month PM checks on trailers. The three month check will replace lubes and fluids, check brakes, lights and tires while the six month service goes into more depth re torquing lugs on the wheels and overhauling brakes. Cost Savings One of the benefits of preventative maintenance is that by ensuring your vehicle is running at peak efficiency you also get cost savings from reduced fuel usage. For example the charge air cooler which cools the hot air coming from the turbo before it goes into the intake manifolds. The charge air cooler often develops leaks over time which translate into a loss of pressure. As the pressure goes down so does the mileage you can run for any given amount of fuel and your diesel bill goes up. So we use a pressure test kit to check for leaks in the charge air cooler and keep fuel efficiency at its peak. Even simple things like regularly replacing filters and keeping manifolds at their best will have a significant knock on effect on the money you pay on fuel – and we are sure we don't have to tell you how important that is. |
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