Businesses are all about reducing their overhead costs and operating expenses wherever possible. Some costs are avoidable but, come to think of it, so are some disasters.
Reduce the Chances of Seeing a Tow Truck
There are proactive steps that you can take today to reduce the chances of a disaster striking and complicating your logistics, and one of the most obvious steps to take is regular fleet vehicle maintenance.
The beauty of fleet vehicle maintenance is that it allows your business, whether established or developing, to realize greater operational efficiencies and avoid roadside disasters.
You wouldn’t neglect an oil change or regular maintenance on your personal vehicle, right?
Then why would you wave off regular maintenance on your fleet vehicles. When you stop to consider it, your fleet vehicles might need it more considering the kinds of conditions they’re regularly subjected to.
Dangers of Stop and Go Driving
Unfortunately, a lot of the driving and wear-and-tear damage that gets done to fleet vehicles is pretty unavoidable and a direct consequence of the kinds of jobs that fleet vehicles are put towards.
Consider a fleet vehicle out on a bunch of deliveries in the city. Right there you have two potential issues.
Being in the city invariably means a lot of stop-and-go driving and the city also likely means more potholes than anywhere else. Those streets see a lot of action!
Engine
What happens with this kind of driving is weak engine ventilation because of all the idling that you’re doing at lights and while parked making a delivery, for instance.
This kind of driving can lead to carbon buildup in your engine and produce costly engine damage if you don’t get regular oil changes.
Working in oil changes as part of your fleet vehicle maintenance helps to lubricate the engine and prevent overheating or sludge buildup. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Brakes
Your engine gets a workout with stop-and-go driving, but that kind of driving doesn’t do a lot of favors for your brakes and tires either. Now, there are a lot of different signs that your brakes are going the way of the dodo. A few of the more obvious signs would be:
-Brake light on
-Grinding noise when braking
-Metallic squeal while driving
-Wobble or lean while braking
-Leaking fluid
-Chemical smell after hard braking
-Bouncing motion while idling
Each of these issues could be coming from different places in your braking system. Your brake calipers, master cylinder, or power booster might need maintenance or replacement.
There are some problems that you can take educated guesses with – e.g., your master cylinder braking down, so to speak, will likely cause huge problems with your braking system since that controls the power to your brakes – but only an ASE-certified mechanic at All Around Auto Repair can tell for sure.
Tires
Hitting potholes with fleet vehicles can puncture your tires or lead to leaks that plummet your fleet vehicle’s effectiveness on the roads. Your logistics don’t need that.
Having a vehicle go down because of a flat could mean putting more stress on the other vehicles in your fleet that subsequently have to pick up the slack for the fallen soldier.
Then again, the problem isn’t always so obvious – potholes can cause bends, cracks, and damage in things like alignment, sidewalls, and belts. Seemingly minor impacts can throw a vehicle’s alignment out of whack.
Taking your entire fleet in for regular fleet vehicle maintenance can allow mechanics to spot subtle damage when they go through a wheel alignment and readjust the angles of the wheels to the manufacturer’s specifications.
The payoff is better performance from all of your fleet vehicles. Tire rotations should also be performed at your fleet vehicle maintenance appointments so that each of your tires get relatively even tread wear.
Get a Comprehensive Check by Scheduling Fleet Vehicle Maintenance
Routine fleet vehicle maintenance is the only way to quickly have all of your systems quickly checked and overhauled.
Schedule fleet vehicle maintenance at All Around Auto Repair to get oil changes and to have your engine, brakes, tires, and much more checked on your fleet vehicles.
