When your business involves a fleet of large trucks, you have a lot of vehicle maintenance to attend to. Out of all the maintenance, however, the most important thing to take care of is your trucks’ brakes. Not doing so can pose a serious safety risk to your drivers and others on the road, not to mention a liability risk to your business.

Fortunately, you can do some key things to take better care of your fleet’s brakes and to extend their lifespan.

Instruct Your Drivers to Perfect the Art of Slowing Down

All motor vehicles have brakes, but the brakes they have aren’t all the same. Learn about the several different types of brakes used on vehicles of various types and sizes.

Disc Brakes: Common on Many Vehicles

Disc brakes are one of the most common types of brakes, and they’re found on many personal vehicles. Most cars at least have disc brakes up front, if not on all four wheels, and the majority of pickup trucks have them. Box trucks and full-size vans frequently also feature these brakes.

Virtually all of the semis and other heavy-duty work trucks on the road today utilize air brakes. Air brakes have a greater reliability than hydraulic brakes, and they can ensure that you can stop your truck safely every time. Of course, even air brakes can develop problems that reduce roadway safety. Many such problems stem from damage or degradation to system components.

Unfortunately, many operators fail to understand all of the components that make up an air brake system, which can lead to neglect and a higher risk of breakdowns. If you would like to brush up on your knowledge regarding air brakes, keep reading. This article outlines three key things to know about the component known as the air dryer.

1. Air Dryers Protect Against System Contaminants

The wheels on your truck experience massive amounts of stress, thanks to the fact that they remain in contact with the ground at all times. A wheel has to be strong and steady enough to resist constant jolting and bouncing while still remaining supple enough to allow your tires to rotate correctly. Your wheel bearings play a crucial role in this process.

Wheel bearings provide stability while ensuring the low-friction conditions necessary for smooth rotation. Of course, to provide reliable results, your wheel bearings require a specific amount of end play. If you would like to learn more about this vital concept, keep reading. This blog goes over four key things to know about end play.

Driving a big rig can be a challenge if a truck engine continually overheats during operation. Thankfully, this situation only has a handful of causes, each of which is a minor concern if owners take the time to get their rig repaired as quickly as possible.

Minor Reasons a Semi Truck May Overheat 

Semi drivers who experience overheating engines lose time on a haul and may experience other mechanical issues. Thankfully, an overheating engine typically serves as a warning of minor problems that require only a little repair. Just a few of these small engine concerns include:

Most trucks on the road today contain drum brakes powered by compressed air. Drum brakes offer reliable and effective results. Yet as time goes on, drum brakes experience a lot of wear and tear. Improperly maintained brakes accumulate such wear and tear much more quickly than they should, hastening the rate of component failure.

The drums, in particular, often succumb to premature failure as the result of maladjusted components. To make matters more complicated, a wide variety of underlying issues may affect the rate of drum brake wear. If you would like to boost your knowledge of truck brake troubleshooting, keep reading. This article investigates three factors that can lead to premature drum wear.

Many people seek to increase towing operations for various reasons. Typically, that increase in operation often comes with an increase in strain on your truck’s towing capacity. The additional strain translates to increased wear and tear on your transmission. In such cases, a transmission cooler can make a huge difference.

What is the Purpose of Transmission Coolers?

Truck owners have two options when it comes to brakes systems: hydraulic or air. While hydraulic systems were once the standard, more operators are choosing air brakes – thanks to their excellent reliability and performance characteristics. Yet, air brake systems do require regular maintenance in order to keep problems at bay.

The flywheel is a large mechanical wheel located at the end of your rig’s crankshaft and is part of the clutch kit. The flywheel plays an important role in keeping the crankshaft balanced, providing the rotational inertia the engine needs to keep working, and facilitating the transfer of kinetic power between the engine and the transmission.

If you run a small- or medium-sized business (SMB), you might cut corners here and there to save money. One common thing SMB business owners do is to buy used semi-trucks instead of new ones for their fleet. Although nothing is wrong with doing this, you should take the process of buying a used truck cautiously. After all, the safety of your drivers relies on that.

Here are several tips to help make sure that the truck you’re looking into is actually safe.