How you maintain your trucking fleet is crucial for keeping your vehicles in good condition, for safety, and for eliminating the chance of overbearing breakdowns. Scheduling and authorization assists you manage everyday checks and services, extend the lifespan of your trucks, and wear less with regulations. Below is a systematic procedure for your trucking fleet maintenance schedule.
Most of the trucks you buy in stock from the dealers come accompanied by set guidelines for truck and equipment inspection, monitoring, maintenance and repair schedules. Take advantage of these suggestions to craft the fleet maintenance edges. This way, one can be able to service important parts such as the engine, transmission system, and brakes within the specified time.
Not only can calendar months dictate how often maintenance occurs, but also how much distance a truck has traveled and the number of hours the engine has worked, more so to the long haulers. Use a method for monitoring the running mileage as well as the engine operation time for every unit in your fleet. This will allow you to perform maintenance activities such as oil, tires and brakes at the most cost effective time and hence reducing risks of damage.
Add inspections on your schedule so that maintenance problems are detected sooner. The drivers should perform a pre-trip inspection on a daily or weekly basis and this entails checking on the tires and lights, fluid levels, brake lights and any other systems critical in driving. Constantly timetabling more extensive examinations by skilled personnel can be beneficial to mitigate the escalation of the trouble, sparing any costly repairs.
Preventive maintenance involves performing regular services on your vehicles in order to avoid problems with them in the future. Preventive maintenance also includes things like changing oil, replacing filters, rotating tires or changing fluids. As in the first point, problems are also prevented through planning for the fleet’s normal usage patterns over time.
Different weather conditions also present different challenges to the trucks. Ensure that your schedule covers seasonal maintenance for when there are extreme weather conditions so as to make your fleet more effective. Among these would be battery and antifreeze check for winter and air conditioning and cooling systems check for the summer.
Documenting any and all maintenance works performed on each of the trucks within the fleet is imperative to tracking the current state of each truck in the fleet. Create digital maintenance logs using fleet management applications which comprise of the service history, repairs done, and future scheduled maintenance. This will help in maintaining your schedule so that there is no avoided maintenance out of the table.
Drivers constitute a vital step in the process of implementing your fleet’s maintenance program. You need to educate your drivers on how to perform pre-trip inspections, monitor for anything that may not be functioning properly, and how to communicate any such problems as they arise. Under normal situations, such communication will allow managers to detect problems earlier and enhance the scheduling of maintenance works.
You need to understand that these schedules are not static, and various scenarios call for the modification of the fleet maintenance schedule. Performance and general truck usage should be reviewed regularly to see if changes are necessary. If some trucks will always be targeting more servicing, evolve your schedule to reflect that so that problems are avoided.
For any trucking business, a properly designed maintenance schedule is most likely to prolong the lifespan of the trucking fleet, avert unforeseen breakdowns, and enhance safety. Following these steps will help you draw up a comprehensive maintenance program that will promote the efficiency and reliability of the fleet and hence keep the trucks on the roads with minimal downtime.
Note: For more information, visit IRS website