D.O.T Blitz!!!
Check your lights and tires, spray your lines and cross your fingers. The season of DOT Blitz is upon us again.
Every year DOT pulls more drivers over and leaves them stranded on the side of the road or in a scale house, waiting on a repair shop to get a service truck out to them. In the end they wind up paying almost double what it would have cost just to fix it right the first time! Everyone dreads it and everyone waits until the last second to do something.
Get proactive!
Buy that ten dollar gladhand that will save you $200 in service calls when that angry or grouchy DOT officer pulls you over. No one wants to pay that amount of money for something so trivial, so why not take care of it when you can?
There are many ways to check what’s going on with your trailer that start with just a simple pre-trip check, all the way to having a shop walk around it and check it for you. The first place to start checking your lights, for example, would be to start with your pigtail. Check the connections and make sure there are no cuts in the line that visibly show wiring.
Sometimes it isn’t always the most difficult thing that knocks a light out of service. Always start at the front of the trailer and go backwards. You know your truck and you know how it reacts to the trailers that you haul, you know when things go wrong. A mudflap gets ripped off, a tire goes bald. If you wouldn’t ignore your truck then you shouldn’t ignore your trailer either! Trailers almost always have problems before the truck and when things go wrong they can damage the truck.
DOT officers are looking for your trailer, one light out, a mudflap missing, and a bald or blown tire. If they pull you over one small audible air leak could shut you down and it is almost unbelievable how often leveling valves are to blame for air leaks that ruin runs and tie drivers up for hours waiting for repairs.
Take the time now to avoid time lost later! You’ll thank yourself in the long run.
Check out the parts mentioned above and our entire Tractor Trailer Parts offering at Trailer Parts Superstore.