For most people, once they start trucking, they’re hooked. Maybe it’s the power you feel while driving the vehicle. Maybe it’s the sense of responsibility that you enjoy upholding as you carry cargo to its destination. Either way, there’s something special about this world. When you get really deep into it, you start to love not just the work, but your truck, too. For this reason, a lot of people enjoy doing their own work on their truck. All you need is access to big machine parts, and you’re good to go. That and a little knowledge can have you back on the road in no time. But can you do the work yourself? You bet. There are some jobs you should steer away from, of course, but you may be a better truck mechanic than you give yourself credit for. Here are some of the benefits of DIYing your big truck repair.
You Save Money
Saving some dough is perhaps the most obvious reason to fix things yourself. If you’ve ever had a nagging problem with a vehicle, you may have experienced what it’s like to realize you could have fixed it yourself. Sometimes, you just get sick of the problem and bring it to a mechanic. An hour later you get a call that the problem was fixed. You go in and ask what it was, and you can’t believe how simple it was. The only thing more amazing than that is the size of the bill you get slapped with. When you choose to DIY certain things on your truck, you’re preventing this from ever happening again. Even if you can’t ultimately fix it, at least you gave it a shot, and you can feel good about paying someone else to do it. But if you have what it takes, you can just do it yourself. And if you’re not sure, there are tons of tutorials out there covering nearly every aspect of truck repair. Once you locate a supplier who can get you the right big machine parts, you will be good to go.
That extra money you save can be put to good use, too. You can spend it on something for yourself or your loved one—or you can spend it on your favorite “loved one,” your big truck. When you save on labor costs, you can then invest that money in getting better big machine parts. You can opt for ones with exrtra features, or go with the one with the better warranty or build quality. The options open up real quick once you start saving some dough.
Save When You Change Your Own Filters
Changing your own filters is a great way to save some cash. Unlike many other procedures, this requires minimal skill and patience. Also, it’s one of those things that if you pay for it, you’ll be doing a face palm moments later. You can find parts online to get it done. Any spot that sells replacement parts should have what you need, but when in doubt, ask a parts shop you definitely trust. Big machine parts can be obtained fairly easily, but you definitely want to make sure you get the right ones for the job. Once you do that, you’ll be ready to roll.
Caution: Don’t Change Your Own Oil Unless You’re Prepared
Doing an oil change isn’t too hard, obviously. But you have to be prepared to do away with the old oil. If you have a buddy who works at a shop, then, yeah, that might work. You could just bring it to him or her, and they can get rid of it for you. Otherwise, you’re probably not going to have a good way of getting rid of it. An all that oil definitely can’t be disposed of safely in any other way. So avoid this unless you have a hook-up.
Choose the right parts when you’re choosing to do a project yourself. Since you’re saving, you might as well go for the highest quality parts you can find. If not, that’s still cool because you may be able to save more on your next replacement by getting multiples of certain things you’re going to need again, like semi truck lights or other, incidental semi truck parts.
