How to Keep Your Fleet Maintained
As many physical stores have closed and local authorities have advised people to stay inside, delivery needs are skyrocketing. To accommodate the additional delivery demand, commercial vehicles are undergoing more wear and tear than ever before. As such, fleet operators need to keep routine maintenance as a top priority if they want their vehicles to stay serviceable. To learn how to keep your fleet maintained, continue reading.
Tend to your tires
One of the most important aspects of keeping your fleet maintained is tending to your tires. Poorly maintained tires will quickly burn a hole through your budget by decreasing the fuel economy of your fleet. In addition, worn down, poorly inflated, or misaligned tires will also create dangerous driving conditions by reducing traction and making it harder to brake and steer.
To prevent such negative safety and economic impacts, keep a close eye on the condition of your fleet’s tires. Because different vehicles encounter different road surfaces and weather, not all of your fleet’s tires will experience the same wear and need replacement or inflation at the same time. Thus, it is important to check the tires on each vehicle before every trip—especially longer journeys—to make sure they are in good condition.
Clean your vehicle’s particulate filter system
Another important factor to consider when it comes to fleet maintenance is your vehicle’s particulate filter system. If your fleet consists of trucks with diesel engines, maintaining their diesel particulate filter systems will extend their life and improve their performance. Such filters trap ash and soot from motor oil and exhaust. You must actively burn off this ash in the filter either every 100,000 miles or 3,000 hours, depending on which comes first. To do so, inject extra fuel upstream from an oxygen catalyst or plug an electric heater into the engine.
Enlist the help of technology
When it comes to maintaining your commercial vehicles, there are countless factors to consider—way more than we could ever list in a single article. To help you keep track of everything, consider utilizing a fleet management software. Such software will track your vehicle’s data and automatically submit it to your management system. Then, when it’s time to perform a maintenance task, it will send an alert to remind you. In doing so, fleet management software ensures that you don’t overlook an essential aspect of your vehicle’s maintenance.
