Maintenance Schedule

Grease the truck every weekend. Guarentee ya you'll hardly ever change cam bushings, u-joints, kingpins or tie rods compared to guys who grease once a month.

 

Most contaminants in engine oil are introduced during the PM. I don't think you're helping an older engine by changing before 10-12k, and a newer engine before 20k

That money would be better spent changing common maintenance items when possible. Brakes, starter, u joints, wheel n bearings, bushings, etc, ad nauseum.

Hell of a lot more to a truck than an engine and transmission.

 

I spent $250 per truck and put cordless grease guns in them. They paid for themselves in automatic slacks alone the first year.

 

Grease and oil are cheap. I Grease steer axle for sure once a week and whole truck weekly or bi-weekly. Try to plan breakdowns, getting under the truck weekly you will find small problems before they become big problems. I'm not a big fan of replacing parts for no reason but if they are showing signs of failure I'm not afraid to replace before they go completely caput. Replaced both rears when they started showing to much metal on the plug, they might have lasted 200,000 miles more or 50,000 who knows. But I'm not gonna just replace parts at X amount of miles. If you watch things you can usually spot small things before they become big things

 

Slack adjusters can last dang near forever if they get a couple shots of grease once a week. Once components are full of grease, hardly takes much to keep them full. I could grease a tridrive/tridem trailer on about 2 to 2.5 tubes of grease.

 

My grandfather was an auld sod Scotsman, wastefulness wasn’t something he tolerated a whole lot and I can’t remember even once being roared at for using too much grease. A big part of it is just being under them on the regular. You figured out there’s found money to be had there. I can’t remember how much stuff I came across and fixed while I was under there adjusting my brakes. I think in some ways automatic slacks caused more problems than they cured.

 

Yep, grease is cheap. $30 worth of grease a month is cheap compared to a u-joint grenading. By the time you factor in a new shaft, yokes, air bags, ABS modulators, labour and possibly a tow/field call it could be a $6,000 repair or more.

Plus like was said earlier, you'll find things before they leave you stuck on the side of the road. Monitor components so you can schedule repairs when its convienient for you.