TOOL TALK

Having the right
tools on your truck can save you time and headaches

By Jeff Barker
Contributing Writer

Any trucker knows that it often becomes necessary to make a few minor repairs yourself to avoid downtime and exorbitant labor costs. It can get downright irritating to have a headlight decide to burn out just before you get to a scale or pass a cop and get their attention – only to find out that you don’t have the tools to replace it on the spot and maybe avoid a citation.

In other cases, you may come across a loose accessory drive belt under the hood while doing your pre-trip inspection. It may need just a few minutes of your time to tighten it – but do you have the tools required to do that?

While company drivers may be limited as to what repairs their employers will allow them to make on their trucks, there are still enough reasons to carry a small toolbox with you to help you get out of an occasional jam.

Owner-operators who want to avoid costly downtime and repair bills will usually opt to carry more tools. But, you don’t need to overload your toolbox with enough stuff to inframe an engine or do a clutch job on the road. Admit it, there are some repairs that are impractical to do out there yourself. You should exercise a bit of reason and not put 2,000 pounds of stuff in the boxes “just in case.”

GOOD QUALITY FIRST

“You get what you pay for” has a lot of meaning to it, especially when it comes to tools. Inferior-quality tools can often create more problems.

If you buy cheap tools, you can wind up with a socket or wrench that rounds off the corners of a bolt head because of a bad design, or a screwdriver tip that breaks off while putting some torsional beef on it to loosen a tight screw.

Besides, you don’t want to bet your ability to make minor repairs on tools that may fail when you’re dealing with a roadside emergency and trying to get that truck back on the road before an overzealous law enforcement officer comes along and decides to have your rig towed.

Something else to consider is that cheaply made tools can often break and injure those who use them. This isn’t something any of us want to think about, but it’s reality, folks. To give you an example, I was tightening some cross-member bolts on one of my trucks several years ago using a ½-inch breaker bar and a black impact socket. The head of the breaker bar handle near where the socket attaches to it broke apart under pressure, and as it shattered, some of that metal flew toward me and sliced the hell out of my left forearm.

It would be worth your time to ask a few veteran truck mechanics what brands of tools they prefer to use, as many of them know firsthand how important it is to have good quality tools. Brands like Snap-On, Matco, Mac Tools, S-K Wayne and Cornwell Tools are well known to those of us who have been involved in the truck repair business.