With trucks all over New Zealand taking a battering from winter weather conditions, keeping your truck clean is important, not only because it looks nice and positively represents the industry, but also it can make spotting any maintenance issues easier than if it’s plastered in mud, dirt and grime.

Hi Little Truckers, I hope everybody is well and you are all keeping warm over winter. I have had a busy few months and there has been no opportunity to do a truck trip with Dad unfortunately.

However, I jumped at the chance to head over to Sollys Richmond Depot recently to meet up with Dad and help him wash the winter’s grime off the Scania.

Mum drove me across to Richmond, I caught up with Dad and after being shown the controls and what to do I was able to drive the Scania onto the wash pad…..what a thrill!

We wet the truck down, then sprayed it with detergent from the foam gun, before sponging the cab and wheels and scrubbing the rest of the unit with a soft brush.

Dad and I then had ‘turn-about’ using the water blaster to clean off the loosened dirt. As we worked our way around the truck and trailer, I asked Dad if he liked washing his truck.

“It’s certainly not my favourite part of the job but I like the finished result,” he said.

I think he secretly hopes I will offer to clean it each week!

We left the Scania to dry in the sun and headed to the smoko room where Dad said he ‘would shout me a cup of tea’ for helping with the washing.

On our way across the yard, I saw Leighton using an interesting-looking machine to shine the alloy wheels on the trailer behind his Iveco.

It’s called a Rim Shine machine and has three rotating arms with soft pads on them. They fit inside of the alloy wheel rims on a truck or trailer. After putting some polish on them, you roll the machine inside the rim and turn it on, it spins and gives them a brilliant shine, without having to do it by hand, using polishing rags.

Talking of shiny things, I hope many of you Little Trucker readers get to the TMC Trucking Industry Show, being held at the Canterbury Park Showgrounds in Christchurch on 25 and 26 November.

There will be hundreds of trucks to gush over and heaps of other trucking-related activities. I look forward to seeing you there!