Avoid This Mistake if You’re an Owner-Operator: Neglecting Regular Truck Maintenance
At S&S Tire, our 24/7 emergency roadside assistance and comprehensive owner-operator services help truckers increase profitability by reducing maintenance costs. Keeping our customers on the road are 14 commercial S&S truck tire centers – each one staffed by a TIA-certified trainer – two tire retreading plants and a dedicated team of experienced technicians and expert mechanics. However, some owner-operators forego regular truck maintenance only to encounter more severe costs down the road – pun intended.
Being an owner-operator most definitely has its challenges. You’re constantly pressed for time, always doing everything you can to get that all-important delivery on time, while also working overtime to ensure you’re booking the next job.
Whether intentional or unintentional, neglecting regular truck maintenance can severely impact your revenue, put long-standing customer relationships at risk, take you out of service for days – if not weeks – and force you to miss time-critical deliveries.
Benefits of Regular Maintenance
Adopting a proactive truck maintenance program isn’t just about operating your truck efficiently. It’s ultimately about avoiding the endless delays and high costs of more expensive repairs and servicing.
Improved Fuel Efficiency
A critical cost driver for owner-operators is the price of fuel. With those prices seemingly on a never-ending rise, it simply makes sense that any action that improves your truck’s fuel efficiency will increase your profitability. A proactive maintenance schedule can improve fuel efficiency by ensuring your tires are properly inflated and ensuring your engine is properly lubricated and running at optimal efficiency.
Lower Repair Costs
Your truck’s entire undercarriage, suspension, transmission, engine, brakes, hydraulics, and tires are one comprehensive interconnected system. Poorly inflated tires can not only lead to serious tire blowouts, accidents, and extended tire tread wear – reducing tire life and increasing tire costs – but improperly inflated tires can severely damage your suspension, transmission, and brakes by forcing the uneven distribution of your truck’s weight. Eventually, this excessive weight wears out critical suspension, transmission, and brake components.
Better Truck Resale Value
Proper truck maintenance goes a long way to helping you get the best possible value for your rig once you finally decide to sell it. Whether you’re upgrading to a new truck or retiring, at some point you’ll want to sell. Maintaining proper maintenance and upkeep records allows you to maximize your selling price as potential buyers will be more confident in making the purchase.
Maintain Daily Revenue
Think about how much revenue you make each day as an owner-operator. Write that value down. Now take that value and multiply it by two, three, or even five days of not driving. Not only will the cost of any truck repair be higher than if you had adopted a regular maintenance program – but after you’ve added your lost daily revenue, it becomes abundantly clear you can’t afford not to do regular maintenance.
The Proactive Owner Operator Services Provided by S&S Tire
At S&S Tire, we’ve invested heavily in ensuring our owner-operator services throughout Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia help our customers stay on the road, stay on time, and increase profitability. Here is a small example of the maintenance services we provide.
24/7 Emergency Roadside Service
Yes, even the best maintenance program can’t account for the unforeseen. Once it happens, we quickly dispatch one of our 24/7 emergency roadside assistance crews. In many instances, our emergency crews will show up with a ready-made replacement tire from one of our two tire retreading plants or our extensive inventory of commercial tires.
Wheel & Tire Balancing and Alignment
Two critical services that help to reduce tire costs and increase fuel efficiency are our tire balancing and alignment services. Our tire balancing ensures the correct distribution of your truck’s weight across all tires. Our tire alignment services adjust the angles of your truck’s tires to ensure they maintain proper surface contact with the road. Both these services reduce tire tread wear, extend the life of your tires, and improve fuel efficiency.
Rim and Wheel Reconditioning and Tire Retreading
Our rim and wheel reconditioning and tire retreading help owner-operators reduce important operating costs. Tire retreading reduces tire expenses while our rim reconditioning includes cleaning, powder coating, inspecting, and giving your rims a new and improved finish.
Truck Alignment Services
Another critical service that helps to extend the life of your tires while ensuring your suspension is working properly is our truck alignment services. These services are critical to ensuring your suspension has equal weight distribution of your truck and its cargo. By improving weight distribution, portions of your suspension and brakes aren’t forced to compensate for a higher amount of weight – which can lead to extensive wear and tear.
TIA-Certified Trainers and Suspension Inspection & Maintenance
All 14 commercial tire centers have an on-staff TIA-certified trainer who is an expert at all things tire and suspension-related. Whether it’s ensuring your tires are properly inflated, providing critical tire and rim maintenance, inspecting for uneven tire tread wear, or ensuring your truck’s suspension is in good shape, our TIA-certified trainers are our subject-matter experts.
Let S&S Tire Put a Proactive Maintenance Program Together for You
At S&S Tire, our team of service technicians, TIA-certified trainers, and mechanics have a vast amount of fleet management experience. Their insight and expertise are relied upon by many fleet managers, long-haul and short-haul truckers as well as owner-operators.
If you would like to better understand our owner operator services or want to know more about how our truck maintenance programs can reduce your costs.
