Dear Al Shirawi Enterprises (ASE) customer
“Preventive repairs” are something everyone who works with vehicles knows about, but they can be the first thing to fall by the wayside when times are hard.
Why it’s worth maintaining your trailers
A properly maintained trailer is a vital part of running a smooth and profitable operation. A badly maintained one will at best cost you a lot of money in repairs, not only of the trailer but also the tractor, and at worse be a real death trap.
RTA has now made annual inspections of trailers mandatory in Dubai and they have done it for a reason – to make our roads safer. If for instance the brakes on a trailer are not working, that puts extra load on the tractor’s brakes.
And if the trailer and tractor brakes are not balanced, you have a greater chance of “jack-knifing” the trailer, with potentially devastating consequences.
There are of course other areas to look at: your kingpin should be in good order; suspension and bushings should be well maintained; tyres should have the correct tread depth; pressure and alignment; and lights and lashing points should be in good condition.
At ASE we can assist you with adding your trailers to our maintenance scheme to ensure they are serviced to the same standard as your truck, all with one goal – giving you More Time on the Road.
Oil Sampling
How often have we ignored signs that a part or a component needs replacement in anticipation that the problem will simply go away? Or, so that we can mentally delay acknowledging the potential failure until a time when it better fits our budget?
By focusing on oil sampling, regular maintenance and daily inspections, we can detect many issues at an early stage. But you won’t save money if you fail to act on the findings.
What about those items that either work or they don’t? The items that, if they fail, will cause a complete standstill. I’m talking about sensors, belts, thermostats, starter motors, batteries, radiator hoses and others.
Our solution is preventive repair. In essence it means that we replace selected items at given intervals when a truck is in for a service and before the item has failed.
This will result in More Time on the Road, less downtime and improved cost savings. In other words, fewer headaches for you.
When a truck breaks down, you have not only the cost of repair, but also delays and loss of revenue.
Clearly, preventive repairs make economic sense. Do your own check on this. Start a logbook for each vehicle and keep track of how many days the truck is on the road, how many days between breakdowns, the length of downtime and cost for each failure repair.
We can assist by going through your logbook details with you to see what we can do to extend the time between breakdown and reduce your total cost. You’ll be surprised to see how much money we can save you.
Remember, we can reduce your unplanned stops by up to 70 per cent and the cost per unplanned stop by up to 90 per cent.
Next Week
In the final installment of this series I’ll show how you can save money by using genuine brake parts.
More Time on the Road
with Al Shirawi Enterprises (ASE)Lars Möller, General Manager, After Sales
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