How to Reduce Costs of Maintaining Your Trucks
Many factors that contribute to the fleet expenses that you’ll be paying when you have your own trucks. Fleet managers need to do more to put in effort to make big savings and improvements, and it starts with preventative maintenance.
With the right preventative maintenance, you can ensure that your fleet is managed correctly, your drivers are safe, and you have the right technologies to ensure that your trucks are not going to come off the road. From the installation of the right PTO pump, to ensuring that your trucks are DOT ready at all times, we’ve got some tips to help. Let’s take a look at how you can reduce your trucking maintenance costs.
- Increase your tyre expenses. With the proper maintenance and choosing of the right tyres, you’ll be able to affect your fleet fuel expenses and extend the tyre life at the same time. This helps you to kill two birds with one stone. If you develop a tyre retreading program and you ensure that your tyres are not aligned poorly, you’re going to ensure that your fuel costs maintain efficiency too. You should always check your alignment whenever possible and if the truck has been towed, if there is anything unusual were noticed and the ties are being changed. That’s when you need to ensure the alignment is in place.
- Consider the behavior of your drivers. If your drivers are revving the engine or making movement before the engine has warmed up, the engine is going to wear out faster. You should also be ensuring that they run at the most fuel efficient engine speeds possible. Training your drivers to avoid idling and keep in mind engines wear out twice as fast idling as under normal operation. You will ensure that your driver behavior is not going to impact the health of the trucks.
- Make sure that each truck is properly spec’ed. When you’re inspecting vehicles, you should make sure that all of the components from the drivetrain to the aerodynamics are matching to maximize fuel efficiency and function on the road. Adding the right aerodynamic features can also be cost effective, and when you’re inspecting a vehicle you should always be aware of the weight of the various components. Not only will this increase fuel consumption, but it could cut down on that payload that you’re paying out.
- Invest in preventative maintenance. It pays off by avoiding all of those unnecessary emergency expenses. Preventative maintenance programs, from winterizing vehicles to checking fluid levels, will ensure that you don’t have to worry about your trucks on the road because you can feel confident that they are in one piece. Winterizing your vehicles, for example, can help you to ensure that no matter the weather, your trucks are safe.
It’s always a good idea to look up compliance to ensure that you are treating your trucks with the right respect that’s required. You should never look upon your trucks as something that’s a burden, but as something that is earning you money, and you should therefore treat them with respect.
*This is a collaborative post.
