Industry Trends & Drivers

From electronic DVIRs to maintenance management platforms, fleets have plenty of digital tools to create proactive strategies to remedy downtime and driver dissatisfaction.

If electric truck manufacturers want to be successful, they need to listen to what fleets want in terms of operational performance of EVs.

Backed-up trucks waiting on repairs can be a major bottleneck.

Before your operation goes where it’s never gone before, load up on data and ask the hard questions.

Brent Nussbaum and his employee-owned carrier get fewer new Class 8 trucks than they want, but a strong maintenance program is helping keep its older trucks on the road longer.

Electric trucks, with fewer moving parts and fluids, as well as the elimination of exhaust aftertreatment systems, are widely expected to reduce equipment service needs. Likewise, routine maintenance for things likes brakes are anticipated to drop as well. Still, with electric commercial vehicles increasingly being operated across North America, fleets are on an EV learning curve that includes the need to address maintenance needs and challenges.

Crum Trucking’s focus on a quality approach to all aspects of its maintenance operation is paying off in efficiency dividends.

It’s time to give maintenance the resources and respect that innovation gets.

Ask any fleet manager focused on service: Indulge in preventative maintenance, and it’s going to save you time and money. Managers who run a well-maintained fleet will have trucks that break down less often and save more fuel.

American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council and Decisiv Inc., reported that maintenance costs rose 3.7% in the fourth quarter, and are up more than 10% from the previous year.

One ongoing industry trend is more stringent enforcement of manufacturer-recommended preventive maintenance (PM) services required for warranty coverage eligibility. Increasingly stringent warranty enforcement underscores the importance of PM compliance and documentation of services performed.

How ready are fleets, dealers, distributors and repair garages to service emerging truck technology? That subject got a lot of attention at the recent Heavy Duty Aftermarket Dialogue and Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week. Experts on two panel discussions offered insights into what fleets need to know about current and future technology

At TranSource Truck & Trailer Centers in North Carolina, service technologies and a focus on paperless processes are helping improve asset utilization for customers.

The better you maintain a vehicle, the longer it will last. But truck maintenance impacts more than just the vehicle.

So, once you know what steps to take to prepare your shop for the arrival of an electric truck (and if you don’t, read our story on how to do so), the next step, and it is a crucial one, is making sure that your technicians have all the information they need to safely and properly work on an electric truck.