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Avoid Costly Downtime With a Preventive Maintenance Checklist

Published on February 5, 2015

We all know the revenue needle stops moving during unexpected downtime. That’s why preventive maintenance is so important to your business. Although wear issues develop with all equipment over time, you must answer one simple question about your maintenance plan: Do you want to be proactive or reactive?

If you’ve had a machine break down or lost valuable work time that could have been avoided by following your manufacturer’s recommended maintenance schedule, then you know the frustration of losing revenue.

Your ability to protect your assets and prolong their useful life is largely dependent on creating a consistent maintenance plan that covers three key areas:

  • Properly assess your business needs with machine capabilities
  • Anticipate wear and follow recommended maintenance intervals
  • Understand today’s maintenance needs

Assess Capabilities

The first step toward a proactive approach to maintenance is assessing how you will use a compact excavator or a loader. For excavators: How deep will you dig and in what ground conditions? For loaders: How much weight will you routinely lift? What will you load into? What size restrictions are on the jobsite?

If your equipment is allocated to jobs it’s not designed to handle, you are more likely to have a machine that may need frequent repairs. It’s important to follow manufacturers’ rated capacity guidelines to purchase the correct size of machine.