Vehicle and Trailer Maintenance

by Diane M. Calabrese | Published August 2026

 

 

Vehicles and trailers are like shoes and socks. Safe walking depends on shoes and socks working together. Oversized socks, undersized shoes, and all the other variants make for trouble. And there’s plenty of potential for trouble when vehicles and trailers are mismatched in size.

Both pairings also perform optimally when they receive the maintenance they need. A worn heel could contribute to a trip and fall. The wrong pressure in a vehicle or trailer tire can lead to calamity.

Attend to every component of a vehicle and trailer pair. That’s prudent maintenance that includes cleaning. Use the correct cleaning method; throwing shoes in a washer with socks is not a good option.

Safe driving (like safe walking) depends on a precise match. We all understand the perils of an ill-fitting shoe made so because it’s forced over thick socks.

Yet we have wondered about drivers ahead of us on the interstate highways that seem to have a mismatch in vehicle and trailer. The less-than-precise choice can negatively affect the tandem arrangement.

Take the trailer. “If the size is not correct for the amount of equipment, tanks, and supplies it will be carrying, that’s a problem,” says Linda Chambers, brand and sales manager at GCE/Soap Warehouse, a distributor, supplier, and service center based in Norcross, GA.

“Loading too much weight on too small a trailer, stacking items too high or where they cannot be secured properly, or having a single axle when a double is required for weight are all ways to precipitate a negative outcome,” explains Chambers. So, too, is “not having stationary equipment and tanks attached properly and placed for a balanced load.”

Weigh station inspectors will identify problems with weight and load immediately, but the bigger reason to ensure there are no problems is to promote safety.  Mismatches in weight and load balance and haphazardly secured loads are dangerous. “They can affect the safety of towing,” says Chambers.

Safety and damage to conveyances are linked, of course. “If tongue weight is wrong or exceeded, or if the center of gravity is too high, then these can cause damage to the towing vehicle by strain on the engine, transmission, and excessive tire wear,” explains Chambers.

Contractors (and others) who rely on their vehicle and trailer each day must think about more than correct configuration. They must think about cleaning.

In some cases trailers may require cleaning more often than vehicles—”even daily if exposed to corrosive chemicals like bleach,” says Chambers.

At the end of a service day, “all surfaces should be rinsed or cleaned with neutralizing cleaners to prevent damage to wood and metals,” explains Chambers. The damage that can be done by bleach to reels or the wood and metal floor of a box truck can be prevented by scrupulous rinsing and neutralizing.

Power washing contractors need not take their vehicles to a fleet washing specialist. But they do need to regularly clean their vehicles and trailers.

“If contractors have the correct chemicals and take the time to do the work correctly themselves, there should be no reason to hire an outside company,” says Chambers. That’s important information for small contractors.

Also important is that smaller power washing contractors tap into advice available to them. Owner-operators can get excellent advice regarding chemical use and storage from the distributors, such as Chambers’s company, where they buy their chemicals and other ancillaries.

As contractors grow, they may become so busy that an arrangement with a fleet washing company makes economic sense. Whether they are ready to go that route or stay with an in-house wash plan, the recommendation remains the same. Trailers should be cleaned as often as vehicles.

“Yes, and in our industry you could argue more often,” says Michael Hinderliter, president at PowerWash.com and Phil Ackland Training and owner of Steamaway and Facilitec Southwest, who is based in Fort Worth, TX.

“A power washing trailer hauls detergents, degreasers, and sodium hypochlorite, and road salt residue collects on bare steel, welds, and the frame, causing unnecessary corrosion,” says Hinderliter. He adds that damage ultimately impacts safety.

“Skip the wash routine, and you’ll see it show up as rust at every joint, corroded seven-way connectors that drop your brake and turn signals at the worst possible moment, deteriorated breakaway switch wiring, and wraps and decals that lift inside a season,” says Hinderliter. That’s a very worrisome list of consequences.

But if the prospects of damage and reduced safety fail to persuade one that cleaning is essential, perhaps something else will. That’s company image.

“The trailer is also the first thing your customer sees when you pull onto the property,” says Hinderliter “A grimy trailer behind a clean truck tells the buyer you don’t sweat the details, and details are what they’re paying you for.”

Hinderliter’s Steamaway company has specialized in cleaning commercial vehicles since 1985. He suggests that even small companies should consider committing to regular vehicle and trailer cleaning by a fleet washer that specializes in the work.

“Treat it as preventive maintenance, not vanity,” says Hinderliter. “Most contractors are owner-operators already running 60-hour weeks.” The time spent washing a rig could be spent bidding, training crews, etc.

Hinderliter aims through the services his company provides to contribute to the entire industry. “Clean rigs win bids,” he says. “Dirty ones lose them before the proposal is even opened.”

 

Safety First

A good lifespan, a great image, and safe travel follow from proper maintenance of vehicles and trailers. All bolster a business, but perhaps safety gives a business the biggest boost.

“Most contractors size a trailer by GVWR [gross vehicle weight rating] and tow capacity and stop there,” says Hinderliter. “The bigger problem is usually load distribution, not gross weight.”

And Hinderliter shares an experience from the days when he ran as an owner-operator to illustrate what can go wrong if the match is incorrect. “Tongue weight should run 10 to 15 percent of the loaded trailer weight, and when it doesn’t, you’re in trouble before you ever leave the lot.

“I had a rig set up with a hot-water skid, two chemical tanks, and all the hose reels mounted behind the axles,” he continues. “Up front sat just two cold-water units and a heater coil. When I was driving on a downward-sloping steep grade, the trailer started swaying when applying the brakes.”

It got worse when the trailer took to “full-on whipping,” says Hinderliter. “The mass behind the axles wanted to pivot around the trailer hitch, and every brake application made it worse.”

Hinderliter used “hard, timed taps” of the brake to slow down without pulling the trailer sideways. Then, he learned he could manually apply the trailer brakes from the controller.

The manual application slows the trailer at the wheels instead of at the tongue and stops the swaying. But that was not the permanent fix.

“The permanent fix was repositioning the chemical tanks forward of the axles to restore proper tongue weight,” explains Hinderliter.

“Contractors can greatly enhance safety by running a written pre-trip inspection with their crews,” says Hinderliter. “Most don’t, and it’s the cheapest insurance policy in the business.”

Hinderliter tells us why he has a very strong opinion about the need for pre-checks and urges others to learn from his experience as he did 25 years ago. “At that time, I wasn’t running safety chains,” he explains. (After the experience, he never again ran without them.)

What happened? “I pulled out of the yard without confirming the coupler was fully latched on the ball,” explains Hinderliter. He hit a bump about a mile on but did not realize immediately the trailer had detached, but he did realize his vehicle seemed lighter and faster when he accelerated; and then, he realized the worst had happened.

Fortunately, the trailer, which tracked across the median, encountered no vehicles and rolled onto its side. “If a vehicle had been there, it would have been catastrophic,” says Hinderliter.

Not quite as bad as an errant trailer rolling away, but a trailer with electrical lines severed from the vehicle supplied by the seven-way connector is bad. That’s a big reason for pre-checks.

“Two minutes per rig takes care of a pre-check,” says Hinderliter. “It eliminates the most common breakdowns, DOT [Department of Transportation] violations, and incidents like roll-away trailers.”

“There are things to “verify before rolling out” every time,” says Hinderliter. They are “tire pressure on truck and trailer,  – including spares, coupler fully sealed and locked on the ball or pintle, safety chains attached and crossed under the tongue with the breakaway cable hooked separately to the tow vehicle, all running lights, brake lights and turn signals functioning through the 7seven-way, and trailer brakes responding from the controller.”

As an aside, Hinderliter says that as his businesses grew, he moved from trailers and into vans and box trucks to keep equipment out of the weather. “As an operation scales, that’s an upgrade worth considering.”

Analogous to choosing slipper-socks as all-in-one for feet? In the sense that slipper and sock, like vehicle and cargo bed, can never be separated, yes.  There will probably be continuing needs for trailers, though, whether economical or functional, so a firm commitment to the safest operation of them is a necessary business concern.