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Spring cleaning: How to keep your equipment stored properly and conveniently on your vehicles
1 Apr, 2005 By: Jim Harmon Pest Management ProfessionalWinter is over, and the busy season begins. Vehicle maintenance, set-up and new acquisitions are key elements to this programming. Let's look at some maintenance tips for early spring as well as examples of innovative storage solutions for your fleet.
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While routine preventative vehicle maintenance is important, you can look only to the manufacturer's guides to severe duty maintenance on the vehicles to ensure you have minimal hiccups during the year. Making sure all your vehicles are ready for the season should include complete inspections of the vehicles and alignments to preserve the tires as long as possible. Now is also the time to clean up all the boxes and graphics before things get busy.
Revisit your fleet program
Take a look at the history of the vehicles and their repair histories over the last two years. Identify vehicles and drivers that go through tires in less than 40,000 miles. How often have you had to have brakes replaced? If it's more than once in 30,000 miles, it may be time to switch to heavier-duty brake pads — or to hold a remedial driving course for certain employees. Made in the USA, the Geneva side box with drawers is available in four different finishes: aluminum, black powdercoated alunimum, powdercoated black steel or powdercoated industrial white. It features a cam-locking system with two keys to provide added security. |
This is an eye-opening experience for owners who are so besieged with information and day-to-day business management issues that fleet management is often overlooked. Driver behavior isn't noticed unless someone calls in and complains or the driver exhibits poor or abusive driving. Otherwise, you are left to hope your employees are driving company vehicles properly while on their own.
The telltale signs of aggressive or abusive driving may include excessive tire wear, dings and small dents on the body, low fuel mileage and extremely short times between stops (5 miles in 10 minutes through the city should set raise the red flag, for example). Other, less-noticeable wear items include shortened brake life and warped brake rotors, suspension problems in relatively new trucks and transmission problems annually.
 Storage installation 101 |
Protect sensitive equipment
While you're examining your fleet with a critical eye, chances are the organization and storage aspects on each truck leave a lot of room for improvement.With the increased use of baits and monitoring devices, there's an increased emphasis on proper storage of these materials to avoid picking up the odors of liquid and dry pesticide formulations. They also need to be protected from high temperatures. Pheromones for insect monitoring or for bee control, in particular, are very temperature-sensitive. This creates more storage dilemmas.
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It has been common practice to store rodent baits and traps in aseparate compartment from all otherinsecticides. This is even more important when using rodent monitoring blocks. If this material, along with any other rodent control devices, picks up any type of "off" odors, it may render the materials useless. Technicians who smoke or wear cologne should always use latex or chemical-resistant gloves for rodent control because odors can come from them, too.
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