Owning a vehicle in a northern climate sucks. It really does. Vehicles are so much money and the chemicals towns put on the roads during snow events eats vehicles alive. It’s hard to keep a vehicle longer than 10 years in a northern climate without it showing signs of rust. Our landscape company doesn’t have trucks on the road during the height of winter but we are on the roads in late fall and late winter. Unfortunately, our trucks do see chemicals in the 1st and 4th quarter of the year. I’m doing my best to protect our trucks from rust damage. Below is the process we’re trying to do on each truck before each winter.
After winter, we do a thorough power washing. At that time, we’re also using the chemical below. We put it into a garden sprayer, cover the chassis and cab and then rinse it off.
During late summer, we repeat our spring process of power washing, neutralizing any road salt on metal and rinsing. I will usually let the truck dry for a day or two and then I cover the entire chassis and underbody with Fluid Film. I know some guys re-coat every year, building layer upon later, encapsulating all the sand and chemicals. I like to try to power wash it all off and then start fresh each fall with a new layer of Fluid Film on a clean frame. Here are some pictures and videos of the process.
Does this process take some time? Heck yes it does! It takes a couple hours to clean a truck and 4-5 hours to Fluid Film each truck. Afterwards, I feel like I’ve played a football game in the NFL. I haven’t been doing this long enough to really know for sure whether this is helping to preserve our trucks. My mechanic has a 1999 truck he has been covering for years and it’s rust free so I am helpful. Time will tell.
