Preventive Maintenance
A truck cannot make any money unless it is moving down the road. A proper preventive maintenance plan minimizes downtime and unexpected repairs.
A driver pre-trip inspection is the first line of defense in preventing problems on the road. In this video, Meet the Truck, you are introduced to parts of the truck that you need to know to complete a pre-trip inspection.
When your truck gets inspected by a DOT inspector, this video shows what the inspector is looking at.
Meet the Truck
Dot Inspector tells what he looks for
CSA Tire Inspection
Pre-trip Steering Inspection
A driver pre-trip inspection is the first line of defense in preventing problems on the road. In this video, Meet the Truck, you are introduced to parts of the truck that you need to know to complete a pre-trip inspection.
When your truck gets inspected by a DOT inspector, this video shows what the inspector is looking at.
Meet the Truck
Dot Inspector tells what he looks for
CSA Tire Inspection
Pre-trip Steering Inspection
Tires and Wheels
ChanginOne of the jobs an entry level technician performs is changing tires. Wheel end problems including tires and wheels are a leading cause of breakdowns and accidents on the road.
Proper removal, inspection and installation of tires and wheels prevent problems on the road. Here are some videos showing the correct way to do things. R & R Stud Piloted Disc Wheel and Tire R & R Stud Piloted Duals R & R Hub Piloted Disc Wheel and Tire R & R Spoke Wheel Duals Using a Wheel Dolly Demounting and mounting a tire |
Wheel End ServiceWheel end service i a task that many entry level technicians and helpers are asked to perform. It is also one of the most critical tasks performed that when performed incorrectly can lead to injury and death. A wheel end coming off a truck running down the highway is a heavy moving projectile, dangerous to anyone in the vicinity.
Michelin Tires has a 3 part series that looks at wheel end service and it's challenges. Wheel End Safety, Part 1 Wheel End Safety, Part 2 Wheel End Safety, Part 3 |
Maintenance
What's Wrecking Your Tires?
Understanding the reasons behind tire failure can help them live long and productive lives.
April 2018, TruckingInfo.com - Department
by Jim Park, Equipment Editor - Also by this author
Tire service providers and retreaders can be a great source of failure analysis if the unit number and wheel position are tracked. It’s said that dead men tell no tales. Dead tires, however, sure do. Ignore them, and you do so at your expense. Since tires rarely self-destruct, there is always a smoking gun, and it’s in your best interest to find it. You do that through failure analysis.
An expert can tell at a glance what’s happening to a tire, often by just looking at it or rubbing a hand over the tread face. Tire wear, you see, isn’t the tire’s fault. There’s something wrong with the truck that’s aggravating the situation. You must fix that to arrest the tire wear. So where do you start?
If you do not have the luxury of an in-house expert, a service provider can probably help. Jeff Lecklider, president of Gem City Tire in Dayton, Ohio, performs that service for dozens of fleet customers.
“We work with the customer to help them to reduce their tire costs, and we usually start with a fleet survey,” he says. “We’ll give them a baseline of the condition of their fleet, including tread depth, air pressure, any tire conditions, irregular wear, flat tires, etc., and then we recommend a course of action. We do this regularly so we can spot problems as soon as they become visible.”
Various mechanical problems leave telltale signs on tires. Take cupping and scalloped wear on a steer tire. That’s usually caused by some non-uniformity in the tire/wheel assembly, such as non-concentric mounting or a moderate to severe out-of-balance condition. Feathered wear on a steer tire is another easy one – it’s a sign of misalignment. But which misalignment condition? Here you might need to dig a little deeper. It could be an excessive toe-in condition. It could be drive axle misalignment creating a side thrust. Or it could be a bent tie rod.
“Tires are symptomatic,” says tire expert and semi-retired consultant Asa Sharp. “There are a variety of other things on the truck that cause the wear. For that reason, it’s very important to conduct a thorough out-of-service analysis when the tire comes off the truck, or if you’re smart about it, during the regular fleet tire surveys — before the tires hit the scrap pile.
Yes, the world is out to get your tires. Truck stop parking lots, curbs and road hazards take their toll, but inadequate maintenance can be equally to blame.During, after, and beforeIt obviously makes sense to monitor in-service tire performance, watching for irregular wear and mechanically induced damage, but tracking wear and using that insight for future tire purchases really pays off. Tire tracking can be tedious, but it is getting easier. Most maintenance software platforms enable tire tracking, and some of the tire pressure monitoring systems offer the ability to self-populate those databases.
“On top of providing real-time tire pressure and temperature readings and alert schedules, we’re also able to provide fleets with historical performance data to unlock tire performance trends,” says Vanessa Hargrave, CMO of Advantage PressurePro. “We’re now able to help fleets move their tire maintenance programs from reactive to proactive.”
When Kirk Altrichter was vice president of maintenance at Crete Carrier Corp. (he’s now vice president of fleet services at Kenan Advantage Group), he participated in a Tire Benchmarking panel discussion at a TMC meeting where he revealed some of the benefits of a diligent tracking program.
“With my supplier, we have been watching which tires fail at what wheel positions,” he said. “It was interesting but not unexpected that the right rear outer trailer was the most failure-prone position. We also found an unexpectedly high number of failures of the left rear inner tires.
“It’s all about trying to take cost out by identifying problems before they occur on the road. For the past several years we have tried to ensure we have the right tire at the right wheel position,” he added.
Mechanical problems with trucks always show up in tire treads. A trained eye can easily determine the cause. Tire analysis guides can be an equally revealing source of information.If staying on top of your tires while they are still on the truck is too tall an order, there is always the fleet yard survey, or as a last resort, an objective study of your tire scrap pile. It’s too late for that tire once it hits the scrap pile, but if you kept a record of what truck and wheel position it came from, you can still glean some insight from it.
“You’re conducting a post-mortem of sorts,” Sharp says. “It’s easy to determine what happened to the tire. Even if you can’t make that determination yourself, your vendor or the TMC Tire Condition guides can help. Every type of calamity to befall a tire leaves a fingerprint.”
Most regrettable are tires that go missing in action. Their story is likely to remain untold unless the roadside repair service can determine the cause of the failure or get the carcass back to you. It’s estimated that about 80% of on-road tire failures not caused by a road hazard are the result of creeping air loss, or under-inflation. Keeping those tires properly inflated would likely have saved them.
FleetNet America recently produced a maintenance benchmarking report demonstrating the difference in various maintenance practices. In the tire category, for example, results of their collected data showed that the average fleet in the survey experienced on-road tire repair/replacement events every 35,166 miles. The worst-in-class fleet put in a service call every 34,438 miles. Astonishingly, the best-in-class fleet in the reporting group saw a service call frequency at half the rate of the worst fleet, with an event occurring only once every 71,238 miles. Those are averages, of course, but it shows pretty clearly that a bit of tire maintenance can go a really long way.
That fleet, and those like it, probably pay a lot more attention to their tires before and during their service life, rather than after.
What's Wrecking Your Tires?
Understanding the reasons behind tire failure can help them live long and productive lives.
April 2018, TruckingInfo.com - Department
by Jim Park, Equipment Editor - Also by this author
Tire service providers and retreaders can be a great source of failure analysis if the unit number and wheel position are tracked. It’s said that dead men tell no tales. Dead tires, however, sure do. Ignore them, and you do so at your expense. Since tires rarely self-destruct, there is always a smoking gun, and it’s in your best interest to find it. You do that through failure analysis.
An expert can tell at a glance what’s happening to a tire, often by just looking at it or rubbing a hand over the tread face. Tire wear, you see, isn’t the tire’s fault. There’s something wrong with the truck that’s aggravating the situation. You must fix that to arrest the tire wear. So where do you start?
If you do not have the luxury of an in-house expert, a service provider can probably help. Jeff Lecklider, president of Gem City Tire in Dayton, Ohio, performs that service for dozens of fleet customers.
“We work with the customer to help them to reduce their tire costs, and we usually start with a fleet survey,” he says. “We’ll give them a baseline of the condition of their fleet, including tread depth, air pressure, any tire conditions, irregular wear, flat tires, etc., and then we recommend a course of action. We do this regularly so we can spot problems as soon as they become visible.”
Various mechanical problems leave telltale signs on tires. Take cupping and scalloped wear on a steer tire. That’s usually caused by some non-uniformity in the tire/wheel assembly, such as non-concentric mounting or a moderate to severe out-of-balance condition. Feathered wear on a steer tire is another easy one – it’s a sign of misalignment. But which misalignment condition? Here you might need to dig a little deeper. It could be an excessive toe-in condition. It could be drive axle misalignment creating a side thrust. Or it could be a bent tie rod.
“Tires are symptomatic,” says tire expert and semi-retired consultant Asa Sharp. “There are a variety of other things on the truck that cause the wear. For that reason, it’s very important to conduct a thorough out-of-service analysis when the tire comes off the truck, or if you’re smart about it, during the regular fleet tire surveys — before the tires hit the scrap pile.
Yes, the world is out to get your tires. Truck stop parking lots, curbs and road hazards take their toll, but inadequate maintenance can be equally to blame.During, after, and beforeIt obviously makes sense to monitor in-service tire performance, watching for irregular wear and mechanically induced damage, but tracking wear and using that insight for future tire purchases really pays off. Tire tracking can be tedious, but it is getting easier. Most maintenance software platforms enable tire tracking, and some of the tire pressure monitoring systems offer the ability to self-populate those databases.
“On top of providing real-time tire pressure and temperature readings and alert schedules, we’re also able to provide fleets with historical performance data to unlock tire performance trends,” says Vanessa Hargrave, CMO of Advantage PressurePro. “We’re now able to help fleets move their tire maintenance programs from reactive to proactive.”
When Kirk Altrichter was vice president of maintenance at Crete Carrier Corp. (he’s now vice president of fleet services at Kenan Advantage Group), he participated in a Tire Benchmarking panel discussion at a TMC meeting where he revealed some of the benefits of a diligent tracking program.
“With my supplier, we have been watching which tires fail at what wheel positions,” he said. “It was interesting but not unexpected that the right rear outer trailer was the most failure-prone position. We also found an unexpectedly high number of failures of the left rear inner tires.
“It’s all about trying to take cost out by identifying problems before they occur on the road. For the past several years we have tried to ensure we have the right tire at the right wheel position,” he added.
Mechanical problems with trucks always show up in tire treads. A trained eye can easily determine the cause. Tire analysis guides can be an equally revealing source of information.If staying on top of your tires while they are still on the truck is too tall an order, there is always the fleet yard survey, or as a last resort, an objective study of your tire scrap pile. It’s too late for that tire once it hits the scrap pile, but if you kept a record of what truck and wheel position it came from, you can still glean some insight from it.
“You’re conducting a post-mortem of sorts,” Sharp says. “It’s easy to determine what happened to the tire. Even if you can’t make that determination yourself, your vendor or the TMC Tire Condition guides can help. Every type of calamity to befall a tire leaves a fingerprint.”
Most regrettable are tires that go missing in action. Their story is likely to remain untold unless the roadside repair service can determine the cause of the failure or get the carcass back to you. It’s estimated that about 80% of on-road tire failures not caused by a road hazard are the result of creeping air loss, or under-inflation. Keeping those tires properly inflated would likely have saved them.
FleetNet America recently produced a maintenance benchmarking report demonstrating the difference in various maintenance practices. In the tire category, for example, results of their collected data showed that the average fleet in the survey experienced on-road tire repair/replacement events every 35,166 miles. The worst-in-class fleet put in a service call every 34,438 miles. Astonishingly, the best-in-class fleet in the reporting group saw a service call frequency at half the rate of the worst fleet, with an event occurring only once every 71,238 miles. Those are averages, of course, but it shows pretty clearly that a bit of tire maintenance can go a really long way.
That fleet, and those like it, probably pay a lot more attention to their tires before and during their service life, rather than after.
Fluids and Lubricants
Gates Tools for Schools
The purpose of the Tools for Schools program is to provide the educator with supplemental educational materials from a global leader in the Automotive Aftermarket. Gates assists many of the Original Equipment Manufacturers with their research and development, and through this collaboration new products and systems are designed and problems are solved. Technology changes rapidly, and the Tools for Schools program is our way of ensuring that the latest technology and information is available to you 24/7 simply by accessing our website.
Gates Corporation provides online training for the automotive, light-duty truck, heavy duty and hydraulics. Students can register and login to participate in the training. Most training programs have a test to pass to receive a certificate for that program.
Cooling system training is one of the programs. Watch the following videos while completing a handout.
Gates Cooling System Video, Part 1
Gates Cooling System Video, Part 2
Gates Cooling System Video, Part 3
How a Cooling System Works - A really good animation.
Using a ruler seems to be a lost art. Practice reading a ruler at www.rulergame.net