I washed my tractor today I didn't polish the wheels I need to get some more aluminum polish that's kind of a big job, but I washed my truck this morning probably took me 2-3 hours. See my truck has 2 coats of Aviation/Marine grade wax on it so it does carry a little bit of an extra pop to it when it gets cleaned even if it's just through our warehouses auto wash. I don't have to wash trailers I'm at a drop yard and the night driver runs to the warehouse at night. The auto wash at the warehouse is set up so a full set of doubles can drive right through it and that's how they take care of trailer washing, plus a big fleet like the company I work for you pull a different trailer everyday so the trailers are for the shop or our transit guys to run through the auto wash.
Working for a food company and we really do have to try to keep our stuff pretty clean. I also clean the inside as well, I take my floor mats out hose them down wipe down the dash, shifter,radio, windows doors, fire extinguisher get my sponge and scrub the trucks floor all that good stuff. Truck looks good right now, not my best, but 90% better then it was. It's going to snow later in the week so it's not worth putting much more time then I had into right now.
It's hard though in the winter salt to keep things clean,but I do try my best. Some of our other trucks well there not so good, sad to say. This is my truck early December it must have been before the weather turned and I know this was taken at the end of the day you can see my two wheelers in the back left corner.
The thing of it is in 2006 GFS bought a bunch of International's and they didn't really quite take, a lot of the drivers didn't like them, the company didn't really like them either they were feuding with Volvo over a price discrepancy and the company also had bought some Sterlings around 2004ish, but those were also not really liked and they were short lived will say. Anyhow the Internationals were not taken very good care of and when I was issued mine it was already a turd. Well one day I took a garbage can out to it and cleaned it out I think the one time I used a small shovel to clean all the trash out of it. Now while a truck is going to show it's age, if it never gets cleaned and gets trashed it's going to look like trash, but instead of going "Gee this trucks a piece of junk" if you bother to try to make some kind of effort to keep it clean it won't be such a piece of junk it's only bad because it was trashed.
The last safety meeting we had they said just that, they had 235 trucks that are assigned to our warehouse in southern, Ohio and they said they had trucks that were so trashed by the way they were driven and the way they were taken care of that they had to be sold off, 3 years before they really should have been. The Internationals the company had, if the guys who drove them and I know they were not as nice as the Volvo's I get it they weren't as good of a truck as far as controls and creature comforts and what not, but if they were taken care of by the drivers they would have been okay. The company had issues with the International as far as mechanical things and fleet was not a fan of those trucks, but just because the company doesn't like the truck your assingend doesn't mean oh yeah that's a license to trash the thing, after all they already bought and paid for it were all stuck with it keep it up and by doing that, they'll put you in something nicer quicker then if you drive around in a rolling garbage can. It's only a piece of junk if you make it a piece of junk. These companies do spend a lot of money making sure well at least mine does and it looks that R&L is pretty good about it too, but these companies spend a lot of money buying good equipment and we spend a lot of time in that equipment so it's good that people take some pride, what do you think?
Where I work every other Sunday as long as the weather permits a mobil truck wash comes to spray the route trucks down. The warehouse has an auto wash and a regular pull in manual do it your self bay if you want to do that. We also have a hose a brush (that I bought by the way) a hose nozzel and windex and paper towels and a garbage can if you have a route truck and want to wash it your self at our drop yard and we have a shop vac too so it's not like there's no place to wash trucks or throw out garbage. So the company does what they can. My favorite is like when I worked for a beer distributor they had a squeegee for us to wash windows with and sure enough someone ran it over at the fuel island. I remember seeing it busted to smithereens. I think someone also drove off with the fuel pump still in the tank of there truck once. I mean stuff happens your busy your rushing your in a hurry to leave it's just what happens.
