Whether you own your semi trailers or rent semi trailers, the risk of cargo theft is always present. It seems that news reports about cargo theft are more common every day. And the dollar amounts in these losses continue to increase, as well. Depending on what you’re hauling, it’s easy for the value of your cargo to exceed six figures. And the total annual losses from cargo theft are easily in the tens of billions of dollars.
Whether you’re an experienced trucker operating the rig you’ve used for many years or a warehouse employee who has been tasked with moving a rented semi trailer from one place to another, doing your job safely must be your top priority.
With fuel costs always increasing (even after occasionally plateauing or even dropping temporarily) and big rigs averaging about 6 miles per gallon (mpg), any improvement in a vehicle’s aerodynamics can produce savings. And the more improvements you make, the more you save—especially if you’re operating a fleet of trucks and semi trailers.
When you are hauling a semi trailer—especially a loaded semi trailer—perhaps no component on your rig is more important than the brakes. If a problem arises with the truck’s engine and it won’t run, that can be inconvenient and cause you to miss a deadline. If the brakes on your truck and/or semi trailer go out, that can be deadly.
The ability to track trucks and semi trailers using GPS (Global Positioning System) technology is essential to efficient and effective operations and fleet management. Using telematics to monitor when and where rigs are traveling can help you reduce fuel usage, complete more jobs in a given time period and provide better customer service, to mention just a few of the advantages.
It’s a sound you don’t want to hear: You have just started a trip and you apply the brakes or round a corner and a thud or the cracking of wood tells you that the cargo in the back of your dry van trailer or refrigerated trailer has shifted and something has been damaged. You pull over, open the cargo door and discover that you have some clean-up work to do and will be having an uncomfortable conversation about the cost of whatever has been destroyed.