Vendors Offer New Options for Grease

ew greases are offering fleets more operational choices — including extended service intervals — that promise to keep trucks on the road for longer periods at a time, lubricant and equipment manufacturers said.

In the future, sensors could even monitor the performance of lubricants in sealed components, as other sensors do already with truck tires and engines to detect and solve problems sooner, experts said.

“The longer fleets can keep trucks on the road and not have to bring them in for maintenance intervals, the more money they are going to make. So that is what these fleets are going for and that is what the manufacturers of the trucks are trying to satisfy,” said William Wallace, a senior research engineer for petroleum company ChevronTexaco.