No matter how good drivers may be behind the wheel, no one is perfect, meaning that there’s always room for growth. This may explain why the National Transportation Safety Board consistently places the safety of professional and commercial drivers among its “most wanted” list when the year kicks off.

Winter is on its way, in all its snowing, sleeting, blowing and freezing glory. In the next few months, a big part of your job will involve getting your vehicle fleet prepped for the cold. But there’s another part, just as important, but too often overlooked in the flurry of equipment preparation: your facilities.

Data indicates that winter weather brings more breakdowns and roadside repairs than at any other time. A carefully planned maintenance protocol can help protect you from those incidents. Think of it as a sort of low-cost insurance program. Sure, your equipment will stand a better chance of remaining running and productive.

Here’s something a lot of body shop owners may not know but might find more than a little shocking: most body shops that experience a large-scale flash fire will never open their doors again. You read that right: never open again.

Fall is the perfect opportunity to be sure your equipment is ready and protected against cold-weather failure. Even though you’ve been running a comprehensive Fleet Preventative Maintenance program, you already know what ice, snow and sub-freezing temperatures can do to your best laid plans. So, doing a double-check to make sure all your vehicles are ready requires a focus on systems especially vulnerable to winter failure. 

Central to any windshield wiping system are the soft, flexible wiper blades. While they’ve been doing their part to keep windshields clear for better than a century, today’s blades are most definitely not your father’s blades. Improvements in design, materials and manufacturing processes have created wiper blades that outlast and outperform those of even a few short years ago. 

In our culture, it’s buses that literally “own the road” when it comes to popularity and volume of ridership. From the school and inter-city buses bringing local riders to nearby destinations, to the interstate and charter motor coaches that carry people across entire states and regions, buses have long been counted on for fast, convenient, affordable and efficient travel. 

COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact for a prolonged period of time. Spread happens when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or talks, and droplets from their mouth or nose are launched into the air and land in the mouths or noses of people nearby. The droplets can also be inhaled into the lungs. Recent studies indicate that people who are infected but do not have symptoms likely also play a role in the spread of COVID-19.

Let’s be honest. Though it’s really only been a few months since our nation was brought to a standstill by COVID-19, it might seem like a heck of a lot longer. And why not? Our routines have been disrupted like never before. We’ve had to make changes we just weren’t always ready to make. And as we coped as best we could, there were usually more questions than answers. 

Every electrical component uses terminals to make connections, whether transferring electricity through the system from a power source or when grounding. To function properly, the terminal connection must have a sound mechanical and electrical contact to work effectively and prevent damage to the conductors.