Articles - Maintenance - TruckingInfo.com

January 2012, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Outsourcing Your Tire Program

Many fleets keep a technician trained on wheel and tire procedures to look after the day-to-day work, but farm out the mounting and dismounting, retreading, etc. to a vendor. Photo by Jim Park.

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

The service truck arrives at 8:30 Sunday morning, as usual. The two tire techs unload 16 freshly mounted and balanced, retreaded drive tires, eight new steer tires on reconditioned wheels, and a take-off drive tir

Tags: Tires

January 2012, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Dispense With the Grief of Managing Tires: Let a Service Partner Do It for You

Wheel reconditioning can't be done in house because of the painting or powder coating and bead-blasting. Vendors can set up and get economies of volume and get good ROI on that equipment. Photo by Jim Park.

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

The service truck arrives at 8:30 Sunday morning, as usual. The two tire techs unload 16 freshly mounted and balanced, retreaded drive tires, eight new steer tires on reconditioned wheels, and a take-off drive tir

Tags: Managing The Shop

January 2012, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Charging Batteries in Cold Weather

Charging vehicle batteries in cold weather is totally different in the winter. (Photo by Jim Park)

One of the biggest misconceptions is that batteries charge the same throughout the year. They simply don't! In warm weather (above 40 degrees), batteries are very easy to recharge

Tags: Under The Hood

December 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Are Your Wheel Bearings Adjusted Properly?

With tolerances no more than the width of human hairs, there's little room for guess work when torqueing wheel bearings. Photo courtesy of Consolidated Metco.

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

Good and bad in the wheel-bearing world is divided by a very fine line - about the width of two human hairs, in fact. That's not much of a margin considering the potential consequences of improper adjustment

Tags: Tires

December 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Tire Report: Factory Settings vs. 'As-Driven'

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

If something is set to factory specs it must be just right, right? In the alignment world, "factory specs" really means it's close enough. Close enough, however, might not be good enough when your tires are being chewed right off the wheels

Tags: Tires

December 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Tire Report: The Art & Science of Alignment

Too many tires are pulled from service prematurely due to extensive irregular wear. In most cases, alignment would solve those problems.

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

Vehicle alignment is a great example of why they teach geometry in high school. How many times did you wonder when you would ever use Euclidean geometry or the Pythagorean theorem?

Tags: Tires

November 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Long-Life Trailer Specs

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Everything has a life span, but some of the things we make die sooner than they used to. For trailers, shortened lives usually can be blamed on corrosio

Tags: Trailers

November 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Training Technicians - Part One

Understanding the knowledge shortfalls in your shop is the first step to designing a training program.

By Rolf Lockwood, Editor at Large

Training has probably never been more valuable or important than it is in 2011. That's true no matter what the trucking job, but it's especially true in the shop

Tags: Managing The Shop

November 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Tire Storage & Inventory Management

Storing tires and maintaining a current inventory is the task that never ends. There are easier ways to manage tire inventories. (Photo: Jim Park)

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

Even when your tires aren't out on the road getting used and abused, they're still costing you money. Stacked in a warehouse or in a storage trailer on the back forty, they're taking up valuable floor spac

Tags: Tires

October 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Tips for Packing a Tapered Roller Bearing

Improper lubrication causes over half of all the bearing damage that we see in the aftermarket. Timken offers these helpful procedures for packing a bearing with grease

Tags: More Maintenance

October 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

More Than a Temporary Corrosion Covering: Chemically Bonded Phosphate Ceramics

By Del Williams, Contributor

Fighting corrosion in trucks, ships, tanks, planes and equipment costs the Pentagon $22.9 billion a year

Tags: More Maintenance

October 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Too Much Fine Print? Warranties Can Be Hard to Understand, But Effort Is Necessary

By Commentary Rolf Lockwood, Editor at Large

Big fleets often write their own terms when it comes to claims on a manufacturer's warranty

Tags: Managing The Shop

October 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

12 Things You Should Know About Oil & Coolant Analysis

Where a coolant's neutralization number is related to the quantity of acid- or base-forming materials in a solution, pH indicates their intensity - and can indicate things going wrong in the cooling system.

By Deborah Lockridge, Editor in Chief

Oil and coolant are like your blood and your sweat, respectively, and they have to work together to keep you aliv

Tags: Under The Hood

October 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Tire Report: Automatic Tire Inflation Systems Guard Against Premature Failure

In many cases, the cost of two or three service calls will pay for an automatic tire inflation system.

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

Next to the click-click-click sound of your starter on a cold winter morning, a trucker's most dreaded sound has to be the hiss of a slowly deflating tire

Tags: Tires

October 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Advances in Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems Make it Easier than Ever to Get the Most Out of Your Tires

Trucks with flat tires don't go anywhere. TPMS can prevent flats or run-flat conditions that stop trucks and ruin tires. (Photo: Jim Park)

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

Pneumatic or "balloon" tires go back to 1845, when Robert W. Thomson filled a leather-covered rubber tube with air and wrapped it around a wheel

Tags: Tires

September 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Arsenault Survey Shows How Fleets Operate Preventive Maintenance Programs

According to an ongoing survey by Arsenault Associates, 56% of fleets that employ maintenance software use it first and foremost to automate preventive maintenance scheduling

Tags: Managing The Shop

September 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Old Dominion's Green Shop

By Tom Nunlist, Associate Editor

Old Dominion Freight Line has implemented environmentally conscious programs at all 31 of its shops in the lower 48 states

Tags: Managing The Shop

September 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Better Stopping Performance Now Built Into Highway Tractors as New Rules Take Effect

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Emerging from truck factories in the U.S. right now are road tractors that can stop in substantially shorter distances than those built last week. That's because new government stopping-distance requirements took effect August 1st

Tags: Chassis & Brakes

August 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

The Art and Science of Truck and Engine Diagnostics

By Rolf Lockwood, Editor at Large

Diagnostics took a while to become a high art, though for for a long time it was a human one.

Tags: Under The Hood

August 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Extend Tire Life: Learn How to Tell When Your Trucks are Killing Your Tires

Irregular wear on trailer tires could be a combination of pre-existing wear and poor maintenance of the trailer. (Photo by Jim Park)

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

Thousands of tires are cast prematurely onto scrap piles every month. That's hundreds of thousands of miles of operation fleets give up because their tires die untimely, unnatural and often unnecessary deaths. And the tires themselves are rarely to blame

Tags: Tires

August 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Uneven Wear on Wide-Base Single Tires

Shoulder wear on wide-base singles is a common problem.

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

The wear demons don't discriminate between standard and wide-base single tires. With a few exceptions, the kinds of irregular wear that standard tires exhibit will appear on wide-base singles, too

Tags: Tires

August 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

Maintaining and Servicing Diesel Particulate Filters

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Diesel particulate filters trap soot from the exhaust and ash from motor oil. Most soot is burned off in the course of a truck's operations, but ash stays in the filter's honeycomb substrate and is removed through periodic servicing.

Tags: More Maintenance

August 2011, TruckingInfo.com - Feature

What You Need to Know About Tire Valves

By Al Cohn, Director New Market Development & Engineering Support, Pressure Systems International

Most fleets consider tire valve stems and valve hardware as an afterthought, but there are many issues associated with valve stem hardware that fleets need to be aware of

Tags: Tires