As we all know, our trucks—just like any other vehicle—need periodic preventive maintenance and repairs. As drivers, we can take a few simple steps to help the process.
A shop technician usually just needs to move the truck from the yard to the bay before doing most of the work under the hood and along the chassis itself. But there are times when they may need to remove a dash panel and/or do some work in the sleeper on a bunk heater or the rear HVAC unit under the bunk.
As a former truck mechanic I can say from my own firsthand experience that if a driver has a clean cab that is free of trash it made my job much easier—and helped me get the repairs completed in a much more timely manner.
If your bunk heater and/or rear A/C unit is in need of repairs it helps to get everything off of the lower bunk and stored safely on the top bunk—preferably under the safety net. If there’s anything stored around the bunk heater and HVAC unit under the bunk, it would help greatly if that was removed from the area as well.
One thing we need to remember—the AMS technicians are there to perform preventive maintenance and repairs on our trucks and trailers but they are not there to clean up the inside of our trucks for us. If we do our part to make their job easier it will contribute to faster turnaround times so we drivers can be more productive. That is part of what teamwork is about as we all work together in different areas toward one common goal—to serve our hard-earned customer base that makes it possible for all of us to have our jobs.