Truck Inspection Tips to Help You Avoid Repairs on the Road

Driving a truck for a living is not easy. It requires a great deal of skill and know-how to keep yourself, your cargo and those around you safe. One important step for doing that is inspecting your truck every time you are getting ready to hit the road.

Here are just a few of the things truck drivers should always check out before putting the truck into drive.

1. Fluid Levels

Look at all the varius fluid levels – oil, fuel, power steering, coolant and more. Also inspect around the truck to spot any potential leaks to save time and money from having to call a breakdown service.

2. Engine

Examine the engine block to see if there are any signs of leaks, cracks or frayed wires. You should also start your truck up a few times in the days leading up to a road trip to make sure it’s running properly.

3. Tires

While it’s almost impossible to predict when a tire will blow, you can decrease the chances by taking a close look at the condition of each of your tires before you hit the road.

4. Brakes and Brake Pads

Be sure also to check out the brakes on your truck and see if the brake pads need to be replaced.

5. Body

While a little bit of wear and tear to the truck body isn’t much of a concern, unexplained dents and other blemishes could have an underlying cause. Inspecting the body of your truck for any signs of damage before heading out and throughout your trip is a smart preventive maintenance.

6. Check Weather Reports

Always check the weather before starting your trip – keep an eye on changing conditions and fluctuating temperatures while on the road. Knowing what to expect will help you take whatever precautions you need for bad weather driving.

The Importance of Reliable Transportation Management Platform

We all think that starting your own commercial carrier business is easy and simple once all the paperwork is done. We shell out the cash to buy the equipment, do all the necessary paperwork, find our loads and start driving.

Then comes vehicle maintenance, each DOT inspection, and every other simple aspect of the transportation field. As a small business owner, you may feel that you will remember it all. Each time you fueled up, each time you did a brake check, each time you fix a flat tire or do an oil change.

AND THEN LIFE happens, all the small matters accumulate one by one and you can no longer remember what happened and when it happened and why it happened.

Here comes inspection season, tax season, normal why do we not have any money in the account season, and you wonder what occurred? And who to blame.

Transportation management system (TMS) is software that allows people to track all specific tasks in management of any or all aspects relating to a fleet of vehicles operated by a company. The main function of TMS is to accumulate, store, process, monitor, report, and export information.

Operations Management.

Truck Management System for your fleet Recording, Reporting, and Alerting of crucial metrics of your logistics operations. Integrates with ELDs, Fuel Cards, Quickbooks and many more.

The Transportation Management System should be able to manage processes, tasks and events related needed to be a commercial motor carrier.

These include but are not limited to:

-Vehicle inventory - the number and type of vehicles & trailers

-Vehicle maintenance - specific routine and scheduled maintenance, and at need reqs

-Logging of penalty points and infringements against a license

-Cost management and analysis

-Vehicle insurance

-Driver management

-Load Booking system

-Costs of drivers

-Driver pay

-Equipment Tracking

-Telematics

-Route planning

-Customer Invoices

-Logbooks and work time

-Incident management

-Accidents and Fines

Live Load Tracking Option.

Kamion TMS provides you with a tracking link for each load. Your customers can see how their load is moving towards its final destination.

The Geo-fences provide automatic updates of time in and outs at pickups and deliveries. Detention times are tracked automatically.

Reaching for the Impossible: Reign in on unpaid detention times

The legislation calls for DOT to, within a year, begin a rulemaking to reign in unpaid detention time by setting a limit on the amount of time a driver can be detained at a shipper or receiver without being paid for that time. Likewise, it calls for a system by which carriers and drivers could report detention times beyond any limits set by DOT. The bill doesn’t make clear whether the onus would be on shippers/receivers to pay carriers for that time, or if lawmakers intend for carriers to pay drivers for detention

(which obviously would limit the impact on independent operators). Those details likely would be left to FMCSA to sort out. Nonetheless, it could again expand DOT’s ability to regulate shippers and receivers, at least in their interactions with carriers. Detention times have long been an issue for drivers.

Now that the White House appears to be seriously considering adding mandatory detention pay to the next draft of the Highway Bill, the issue has come to the forefront for many small and independent fleets, and everyone has an opinion. But the question remains; is mandatory detention pay good for drivers? View Point 1: it would cost carriers revenue in the long run and result in new taxes to help pay for government oversight of the program. Other people worried that the money for mandatory paid detention times would just come out of their shipping rates and detention time would stay the same.

The best thing you can do to combat long detention times – according to some of those who are against detention pay – is simply not to accept loads from shippers who can’t give a reasonable turnaround. View Point 2: claim that stealing their time is the same thing as stealing, the scenario where you arrived to pick up a load early, but the shippers choose to load and unload their own trucks first since their drivers are paid an hourly wage. After that, they pick a load, load it, pick a load, load it, and on and on. When asked why they didn’t pre-pick the load, the answer was that it would have taken their hourly worker an extra half hour to accomplish the task that way, ignoring the fact that you had to wait an extra three hours because of it. for owner operators simply deciding not to deal with that shipper again isn’t enough. Even if you decide never to work with them again, the next shipper you work with may be exactly the same. And the shipper is completely unhurt by your decision to not work with them again. There are so many small carriers and owner operators that shippers can easily use a new carrier for every single load they have. There are innumerable other issues having to do with mandatory detention time such as who would be responsible for paying? Would it be the carrier or the shipper? Would the FMCSA be able to enforce payments from shippers? Would all detention time be paid, or only if a driver was kept waiting for an unreasonable amount of time? What if the driver was late to pick up a load? Would rigid scheduling windows be enforced? The questions go on and on, but the most important for truckers is this: Is mandatory detention pay