You can’t have a tow truck business without tow trucks. For your business to operate at its full capacity, you need all of your tow trucks to be in good shape. You can’t have your vehicle give up on you by breaking down, can you? To avoid such a betrayal by a member of your faithful fleet, you may want to consider implementing a preventive maintenance program for your tow truck business. Preventive maintenance is basically getting a mechanic to give your tow trucks a check-up so you can take care of any issues before they become dangerous (or just plain headaches.) We’ll explain why preventive maintenance is so important.
The importance of preventive maintenance.
There are a few compelling reasons to start a preventive maintenance program for your business. Along with pre-trip vehicle inspections, maintenance helps you keep your tow trucks or wreckers running smoothly.
1. It helps you know that your tow trucks are safe. Unsafe tow trucks can cause major problems on the road and even accidents. To keep your drivers and those they share the road with safe, it’s important to make sure your wreckers are in tip-top shape. (Plus, avoiding accidents helps you save money on your tow truck insurance.) You can lower your liability by keeping your fleet sound.
2. Preventive maintenance will help reduce the chance of having a breakdown on the road. And that helps your drivers avoid a good deal of stress. You won’t have to deal with a tow truck (and irate tow truck driver) stuck on the side of the road. Besides, getting a tow truck that can’t move by itself to a repair shop is probably more complication than you want to deal with.
3. If you have regular maintenance done on your trucks, the repairs you’ll need most likely won’t be as expensive as if you wait for the tow truck to stop working or have a major problem. Maintenance can also help you cut down on your fuel costs, which are significant for many businesses.
4. You’ll avoid getting violations and fines. Regulations exist to keep everyone safe, and preventive maintenance will help you uphold a high standard of safety for your vehicles. Improving safety at your tow truck business will help you lower your insurance rates.
5. Preventive maintenance can help you avoid negligent entrustment legal trouble. If an accident happens and it’s proved that you knew (or should have known) about a safety hazard involving one of your wreckers but let the driver operate it, that’s negligent entrustment. And that is a big heap of legal trouble.
The importance of clear communication between you, your drivers, and your mechanics.
If there’s ever an issue with a vehicle, it’s important that your drivers have a clear, documented method of conveying that to you and the mechanic. The same goes for preventive maintenance – make sure that everything is recorded.
Some things to get checked as part of your maintenance routine…
- Tire pressure
- Tire tread depth
- Wheel alignment
- Air filters
- Oil (you should get regular oil changes)
- Battery (you should check the battery twice a year)
- Electrical and lighting components
This is just the beginning. You need to find a reliable, trustworthy mechanic who knows tow trucks and have them check your vehicles, then go over what the recommend and what they saw while checking out the truck.
Pro tip: Though your drivers aren’t mechanics, they should know how to recognize problems with their tow trucks and how to report them.
So, as you can see, preventive maintenance is crucial for any tow truck fleet. You might be tempted to wait to throw money into a wrecker until there’s a real problem, but in the long run, it pays off to be proactive when it comes to tow truck maintenance.
Do you want to save money on your tow truck insurance? We can help. We have relationships with numerous carriers who are happy to write tow truck insurance, so we can help you shop for the best coverage at the best possible rate. All you have to do to get tow truck insurance quotes is fill out our online form or give us a call today.
Source:
https://gorillasafety.com/news-room/implementing-a-fleet-maintenance-program/
https://gorillasafety.com/news-room/streamlining-fleets-preventative-maintenance/
