With the demanding work required of your heavy machinery, it’s imperative to provide a consistent maintenance plan. When well taken care of, your oil field equipment is less likely to break down and can provide you a bigger payload. Sticking with a maintenance routine helps extend the life of your equipment and reduces down time. Following these tips on how to maintain oil field equipment will provide longer product life.
Step One: Proper Training
Each person who operates your machines should be properly trained. It’s too expensive, important and dangerous to accept anything else. Nothing wears a machine down faster than improper use. If you’ve got people running your machines with only half the knowledge required, you’re going to be replacing them more often and you won’t get as much payload.
Training on how to maintain oil field equipment isn’t only for new employees. All of your people should be up-to-date on any certifications needed as well as any procedural or equipment changes. Creating a training schedule for employees goes a long way to making sure you don’t miss anything. A little upfront work to plan and schedule trainings will help in the long run. The team will know the machine(s) well and will be able to identify problems, allowing you to address them immediately instead of in the eleventh hour.
Step Two: Keep it Clean
It’s a dirty job, yes, but you have to make an effort to keep your equipment clean. If dust, debris or oil leaks get into your machinery, serious problems may occur. Make sure to identify and clean up any fluid leaks right away. Large field machinery can be susceptible to what seems like a minuscule amount of debris stuck in the gears. Cleanliness protects your equipment and your employees.
Step Three: Create and Stick to a Maintenance Schedule
Your equipment should be inspected daily for cleanliness, lubrication and average wear and tear. You want to know the state of your machine every day. When not properly lubricated, moving parts will take on more friction than they are designed to do—causing them to wear out much faster. It’s important to fix even small equipment problems.
If a machine is often vibrating, that may shift belts out of alignment and cause major damage on machinery. Make sure to check all your belts and gears so you can identify, repair and/or replace any worn parts that will decrease the lifespan of your machine. All of these minor issues can add up to mean major payload loss if left unattended.
One of the most important things to do is to keep a record of your maintenance and cleaning. Along with scheduling maintenance and cleaning, document each time it’s done and any issues that are found to learn your machines better. You’ll be able to track how often a belt needs replaced, how often a seal leaks, etc. These things can help you pinpoint when something is wrong with your machine. Once optimized to peak condition, your equipment should offer you a long and productive life.
Prep Step: Buy the Best with Tiger General
If you really want to have top performing equipment, buy the best. Tiger General has been supplying oil fields with top quality equipment since 1925. We offer the best quality and best support available. Fill out the Tiger General Truck Inquiry Form today to get started on bringing your next piece of equipment to where it’s needed most.