Pre Trip

Pop hood, check oil, coolant, hoses belts, slacks, fuel filter and steer tires.. Look for any leaks. Shut hood, crank it up, let it build air turn on all lights and flashers, grab maul start at the front and walk to the back of the truck bobtail. Thump all tires, look at slacks on drive axles, make sure all lights work.

Hook up to trailer. Check inspection, hook glad hands, check fifth wheel for jaws locked with flashlight and make sure there are no gaps. Roll up landing gear, check for reflectors down the sides, all lights working, abs light comes on, make sure tandem handle is secure, pins are out, hubs aren’t leaking, no lugnuts are missing or rust trails indicating loose lugnuts. Thump all tires with maul, a soft rebound indicates less than 60 psi and needs air. Duck under and look at slack adjusters and mudflaps, check rear lights and reflective strips. Inspect load, seal if necessary, release trailer brakes. Do a hard reverse tug to bow it up, forward tug, kill all lights and watch for brake light reflection when pedal is applied. 15 mins usually and I head out.

 

Depends, 5 to 30 minutes. if Ive never driven the truck, and new to that company may take close to 30 minutes, if I drive the same truck n traillers everday, no one else uses them like here in the bulk industry, then maybe 5 to 10 minutes.

 

Good pretrips save alot of failure and grief down the road. Ask me how I know.

 

I have to admit there has been days when I did not rest well and woke up lazy. I sometimes just walked around the rig looking for easy things. Till I got back near my door. Before he passed away my father drilled into me pre trips. So when I knew in my heart I did not actually look I could see my father standing there with that lets go to the woodshed look. Needless to say I went back and did it right. When it come to trucking right or maintaining my personal car dad was like this with me!

 

The life you save maybe your own.

 

There's a lot more under the hood to check besides the oil. You need to take a better look at things.

 

Teamsters with a mixer, and there's a truck load more to them, and they take 20 times the pounding a road truck takes, is 6 minutes.

So nobody does a good post trip eh?

Everyone waits til first thing in the morning to discover the truck is broke.

Wouldn't want to find it when you shut down, so you could get it fixed?

Did it somehow magically break while you were on your 10?

Yea there's some jokes here.
Bad mega teachings.

 

I have gauges and I watch them. I always glance underneath for leaks, and I'm always driving a newer truck that hasn't been abused. I've never had a mechanical breakdown and every flat I've ever had was discovered during my morning thump. I listen, I watch, and I smell. My system works for me, and I'm happy to hear yours works for you.

 

You should at least once a week check everything on your truck but other then that you can just check oil level , coolant level , belts , no leak under the truck , tire pressure on all of them tires , lights , fuel filter and yeah maybe also check that the trailer is properly hook up you never know ...

 

Always took about 15 mins after checking the fluids and the lights etc. Did that everytime before I rolled.