Understanding Truck Stability

Published September 17, 2017 By Chicago Towing

In industry tests, two Ford F150 trucks were loaded with identical amounts of gravel- one of which were additionally given a suspension stabilizer, and one only carried its default factory suspension. In an interview with the respective drivers after they completed a drive through a testing terrain, the driver who drove the truck with only the factory suspension described the drive as being somewhat “mushy” and bumpy – even inside a flat parking lot, the car and is affected by every ridge and bump, making for a much less smooth drive. The truck fitted with additional suspension stabilizers enjoyed a much smoother and more relaxed drive.

Keeping Truck Tires Efficient

Published September 8, 2017 By Chicago Towing

We understand how complex the maintenance of tires can be. The majority of truck drivers don’t keep daily tabs on the maintenance of their tires, since the haul of driving can be a distraction. It’s quite easy to pay no mind to your tires until somehow one of your treads drop out, or you pick up a bolt – and unfortunately, tires can be quite temperamental, and profit guzzling. Here’s how to avoid letting your tires become a drain on your profits.

Know when to replace and retread tires

The lowest legal depth of a tire is 4/32’ on the steer tires, and 2/32” on the rest. The average wearing rate of tires is somewhere around 1/32” for every 13-14,000 miles driven. To stay prepared, measure your tire treads, and mark down the projected date to replace them based on your calculations of what your average mileage is. This will help you avoid any future upsets.

Keep tires of the same measurements together

Keep new tires with new tires, and used tires with used tires. Keep all tires of the same diameter together. If you don’t do this, you will end up with a tire skipping the ground or scraping it because it isn’t the same size as the others. Early tire wear is never a good thing.

Listen to damaged tires

If your tire keeps getting damaged, don’t just ignore it. It can be a signal to you that you need to get your tires realigned, so understanding exactly what pattern is reoccuring will help you identify exactly what you need to do. Many tire expert websites have solution charts listing the types of damages that can occur with every type of problem.

Install directly on steering axles

Don’t just install retreads on these axles – start fresh, from scratch, and you’ll receive a much smoother ride.

Change pressure based on environment

Make sure to change your tire pressure based on the climate of your area – if you’ve been driving in a warmer area and go into a much colder one, your tire’s air will contract and suddenly your truck is driving with underinflated tires – make sure to check pressure periodically throughout your drive.

Make sure you have the appropriate inflation based on weight

The weight of the load the truck is carrying will affect how the tires operate at varying pressures. Tires that are underinflated for the weight they are bearing will accumulate damage very quickly, at an exponential rate.

Make sure that your wheels are balanced

Any unbalanced wheels will cause serious damage to tires – after making every trip, visually inspect your wheels to see signs of any dents or damages.

Causes of Flat Tires

Published August 23, 2017 By Chicago Towing

We understand how annoying flat tires can be. They simply pop up at the worst times, stranding you on the road looking for a towing service – hopefully from the experts at Chicago Towing. Sometimes, flat tires are unavoidable, however there’s many common causes that force tires to rip or pop; we’ve gathered some of these causes together, to help you better understand what causes flat tires.

Small Holes or Punctures

There’s tons of random objects and detritus on the streets, all of which has the potential to end up in contact or even attached to a car’s tire, which can lead to punctures or holes on the tire. Objects that often cause punctures are staples, screws, and nails. Usually glass cannot cause tire holes, however sometimes it can if it’s at the right angle and density, and glass can however, cause damage to tire treads. If any sharp debris gets out of the tire after it’s been embedded inside it, it will cause a slow air leak. You will be able to tell if you have this sort of leak if you inflate your tire with air, and then it’s PSI quickly drops right after. If this is the case, contact an expert like Chicago Towing.

Sidewalls

This sort of severe damage will cause tires to need to be fully replaced. Basically, sidewall damage severs the connection between the various layers on the sides of the tires that allow movement and flexibility. One of the major causes of sidewall damage on tires are curbs. Making a fast turn and agitating your tire onto the curb can damage the sidewall of the tire, which can in turn increase the chances of a sudden blow-out – incredibly dangerous phenomenon.

Expert Flat Tire Repair from Chicago Towing

While some aspects of tire damage can be remedied and repaired, amateurs wouldn’t attempt this themselves. Leave the tire repair to the experts; this is the only way that you can guarantee that the repairs are completed in an effective fashion and that your tire will continue to operate normally. If you’re in need of repair for any form of flat tire, contact the experts at Chicago Towing. They will arrive at your location in a matter of minutes, quickly repairing any sort of damage to your tires in a matter of minutes, and all at a competitive price.

Tire Maintenance Tips

Published August 8, 2017 By Chicago Towing

Tires are one of many absolutely essential parts of a working vehicle, and we at Chicago Towing understand that they can be costly. So we want to help our customers increase their tire’s longevity, so that they can save money by not having to replace them often. Here’s our professional tips for ensuring the continued healthy maintenance of your tires.

Air Pressure Maintenance

If you check your tire pressure regularly, you can make sure they keep working properly and prevent incurring any serious or even light damage. When your tire air pressure drops, your car’s engine has to work harder to keep your wheels moving, which will eventually cause interior damage and eventually wear your tires down even faster at an exponential level since the friction increases.

Even if you don’t own an air gauge, you can simply take your car to any local auto shop to check it. It’s the best to check air pressure once your tires are cool, as it can be somewhat risky to quickly take the inflation outside of a hot tire. Tires are prone to air loss, averaging around a pound of lost air per inch about once a month. It’s important to check air pressure every few months, and always before embarking on any long car trips on the road.

Suspension Alignment

If your tires are perfectly and symmetrically aligned together, they get much less road friction, allowing your engine to run easier for every rotation of the tires. Tires often get knocked out of alignment when they hit any sort of road obstacle, or fall into a pothole. By aligning the suspension of your car, you will improve the way it drives – the toe, caster, and camber of a tire will be readjusted, rendering them properly aligned again.

Cleanliness

Even when most people pay extra attention to keeping their cars clean, they often don’t clean the tires. By cleaning off tires with soapy water or official tire cleaner, you can make the tire’s tread last longer, and reduce any chances of getting a flat tire (as you’ll notice any rips in the process) – as well as keeping your car looking pristine. It’s smart to ask your local auto shop their opinion on which cleaner to use on your car tires, as some are much stronger than others are and can actually cause damage to the rubber of the tires.

Tire Rotation

Tires normally wear down even with normal driving habits. Based on the make of the car combined with the driving technique used, they might wear down on one side more than another. We recommend ensuring the uniform wear of tires on each side by having your tires rotated. This can be done at home, or even better, by professionals who will remove, turn around, and reconnect the tire. Certain automobile manufacturers have an official recommendation for the amount of necessary rotations per year, but we generally belief in the efficacy of having a rotation for every 6000 or 8000 miles.

Superior Affordable Towing

Published July 19, 2017 By Chicago Towing

For the average discerning customer, when the word “affordable” is spoken, the words “poor quality” and “cheapness” are conjured up. However, this is not, and never is the case with Chicago Towing. We pride ourselves on providing affordability to our customers, while never sacrificing quality or ideal customer service. Continue reading to see how the experts at Chicago Towing help to redefine the entire concept of affordable automobile towing.

One of the Top Towing Fleets in Chicago

Chicago Towing maintains a team of the most technically skilled, efficient, and expert towing fleets in all of Chicago, Illinois. With myriad tow trucks, we can satisfy multiple customer’s needs simultaneously, quickly arriving at their locations and providing optimum levels of high quality service. While you might assume this would lead to us having steep prices, you will actually learn that here at Chicago Towing, we believe in providing our loyal customers excellent service at a great value. We can do this because since we maintain such a large and efficient fleet, we can provide service to a higher amount of customers, over a larger area – allowing us to maintain a more successful business, and we pass this success onto our customers in savings.

We Value Quality

Customer service is important to us because we all share the same community. We want to give our neighbors and fellow community members excellent service to help them get out of a jam when they need the help. Nobody is ever pleased by suddenly learning a major steep price for a necessary tow. This is the reason that providing quality and affordable towing service is so essential to us – we never want to take advantage of the members of our community when they need our help.

We also highly value the satisfaction of our customers. Whenever we provide our customers high quality service, they will think of us as soon as they need that same level of service again. Local small businesses help thrive and survive on regular or repeat customers, and we’re proud and grateful to maintain a steady clientele of fantastic customers – whose continued patronage allows us to offer them fantastic affordable prices in turn.

Get Affordable High Quality Towing at Chicago Towing

Affordable high quality towing is a necessary service to provide the community in our book. Since it’s important to them, it’s important to us. If you ever need help with any sort of roadside assistance or towing, simply reach out to the experts at Chicago Towing. We can help with trucks, cars, semi-trucks, RVs, and even motorcycles. Our towing service offers more than just affordability – we provide unparalleled skill and quality.

Common Breakdown Causes

Published July 13, 2017 By Chicago Towing

Here at Chicago Towing we have been helping to rescue people from stalled cars or car breakdowns for years. In this brief blog post our experts will detail what some of the most common breakdown causes are, so you can be better prepared.

Flat Batteries

If your battery is faulty it’s poor electrical connections will cause breakdowns. Whenever you get your car serviced, have the garage make sure to check the battery connections for secure placement, as well for evidence of corrosion or battery acid leaking. If you don’t often make long car journeys, your battery wouldn’t have charged too much – try charging it overnight around every 2 weeks to keep it running longer.

Key Loss

If your car keys are lost, you won’t be able to restart it which is an issue when parked at home but especially when you’re in the middle of a car trip on the road. If you lose your key, contact an authorized expert locksmith technician who can help furnish you a brand new working key.

Tire Damage

Make sure to check your tire depth tread, and if they are worn unevenly, the wheels could be misaligned. Make sure that your spare wheel has tread and is fully inflated and ready for use. If you use a car jack, make sure it’s in good condition before going on the road, as well as any wheel removal or installation tools, and a lockable wheel nut adapter. If you are driving with heavy loads, make sure to adjust your tire pressure to the change in the weight of your vehicle – look in your car handbook for custom instructions on how to do so.

Alternator Issues

If you have constant battery issues and your headlights dim when your engine is idle, it will likely be an issue with your car’s alternator. If the ignition warning light comes on and the temperature of the engine heats up quickly, the alternator and water pump belt could be broken, which is a very serious and dangerous issue. If this is happening, stop and turn off your engine and call a licensed towing company.

Clutch Cables

If your clutch cables are under major stress they can break, causing major problems. You can notice if this is an issue if you feel the clutch feels different when the pedal is pressed. If the clutch cable breaks, make sure to pull over and give an expert towing company a call.

High Tension Leads

High tension leads carry electricity to the spark plugs, but they can decay with age, making it really hard to start up your car. It can help to use dampness-repellent sprays like WD-40, but it really is the best thing to do to contact an expert car repair company to look over the entire ignition system to test to see if they can solve any of the problems.

Avoiding Scam Towing Services

Published July 1, 2017 By Chicago Towing

If you find yourself in a situation where your car has broken down in the middle of nowhere, you are likely prepared to contact a licensed towing company. However, you might be wary of the many scam towing companies out there that only want to extract some money from their customers rather than truly help out. If you’re worried about these sorts of situations, it can help to be in touch with a trustworthy towing service that can really help, like Chicago Towing. But how can you make sure to avoid a towing scam, or know what group is trustworthy? In this blog post, the experts at Chicago Towing will help you figure out what towing company is the best.

Sniffing Out a Towing Scammer

Scammers can charge unduly amounts for simple services, or even damage your car. One scam is to advertise an undercharged price for a service, which is a sure sign that you’re working with a scam artist. Cheap tow truck services usually conceal hidden costs that only are shown to the customer after the service is provided. These can range from travel fees to additional mileage costs, to gas charges or any range of mumbo-jumbo technical language – plain speaking, it’s highway robbery.

Tow Truck Chasers

Another form of dishonest tow truck business practices that’s rampant today is the payment of tow truck drivers by body shops. These referral fees basically ensure that these tow trucks, known as chasers, will send you to the corresponding repair shop automatically, towing your vehicle straight to them. If you change your mind during your trip to the repair shop, they will likely charge you additional towing service or extra fees – which can range from the 100s to the 1000s in extreme cases.

Scanner Junkies

This category describes tow truck drivers that cruise freeways and highways listening to the police scanner, looking for notifications of accidents or car breakdowns. Then they will turn up automatically, the car owner assuming it’s a lucky coincidence – and will automatically sign on to any contract, most usually, and find themselves locked into a contract that overcharges them a fortune – all out of a desire for convenience.

Finding a quality Tow Truck Company

The best way to prevent being scammed by a tow truck company is to find a trustworthy towing company. You can find this by checking out a company’s Yelp page for customer testimonials – which is the most valuable clues you can find, rather than large ad campaigns. Always ask questions regarding any hidden rates, and ask about all the necessary time of all rendered services. A professional tow truck company will be upfront about their fees, and won’t conceal any information from you. And just to make things easier – if you don’t want to search around for a company, you can always trust in Chicago Towing.

Worst Types of Automobile Breakdowns

Published June 23, 2017 By Chicago Towing

You can imagine that as towing experts, we’ve seen our fair share of awful on-road automobile breakdowns. There’s multiple factors that could cause a driver to need to pull over on the side of the road to contact a licensed towing company; in this brief blog post, the experts at Chicago Towing will detail some of the most worst types of breakdowns.

Battery Issues

Most car batteries should last between 3 and 5 years, but this can be highly shortened if you often drive in extreme temperatures. To avoid getting stranded by your battery, make sure to check your battery every time you get your car checked at a mechanic or dealers, especially if the battery is less than 3 years old. You can spot automobile battery issues when your headlights or interior car lights dim, or your windows are reacting more slowly than beautiful.

Getting Locked Out

This situation really sucks because it’s completely preventable, Make sure to get a spare set of keys copied, and keep them outside your car inside your home or office. If you’re going on a long car journey, make sure to give a pair of the spare keys to another person that you’re traveling with, so if you lose your pair of keys, you’ll have another one readily available.

Engine Issues

These issues most commonly are caused by issues like broken coolant leaking hoses, which in turn cause an engine to overheat. You can inspect hoses and belts by inspecting them for any peeling, cracks, or softening. Make sure to check out transmission and auto fluid levels, with an item similar to a dipstick. You can also prevent engine issues by monitoring your gas mileage on a monthly basis, and if the mileage suddenly drops, it’s likely an engine issue.

Transmission

A sudden drop in mileage could also be due to transmission issues. It’s harder these days to find transmission issues in contemporary modern cars, and what was once easy to spot as a broken transmission might now be revealed to be caused by software or sensor hardware. If you feel a weird jerking or slip when you place automatic transmission in gear, make sure to check out the car’s transmission, and make sure that your mechanic or dealer checks all your fluid during any type of maintenance, especially the transmission fluid.

Brake Problems

Almost no part of the car is more essential for safety than the car’s brakes. Make sure that the brake rotors and pads get check twice a year. The brake fluid should be changed between every 2 and 3 years, depending on the specifications laid out in your car manual. If you pull over to one side when you hit the brakes, hear a grinding or squeaking motion, or your brake pedal feels soft you need to get your brake issues fixed ASAP.

Tow Truck Driving Requirements

Published May 23, 2017 By Chicago Towing

Tow truck drivers are employed in a wide variety of professional industries, as well as dealing directly with civilian clients who may require towing assistance. Whether a vehicle gets somehow disabled, in an accident, ends up parked in an unauthorized place, or needs to get re-possessed, a tow truck driver will bring it to it’s required destination. The requirements stipulated for tow truck drivers vary state-by-state, but all in all they are present in order to ensure the full level of competence for all tow truck drivers on the road. In this brief blog post, the experts at Chicago Towing will detail some of the intense requirements for our professional tow truck technicians.

Government Agency Licensing

All qualifications including certificates and licenses for tow truck drivers are distributed and administered by either, or both, locally based or State run governing agencies. The standard age requirement is usually 18 years old at the minimum. Many State regulations stipulate that all prospective tow truck drivers submit their fingerprints so their criminal background can be investigated – and others require the payment of a fee- and of course, the holding of a valid driver’s license. The United States Dept. of Transportation requires large haul tow truck drivers to carry a separate commercial tow truck driver’s license.

Commercial Licenses

The United States Dept. of Transportation requires possession of a commercial driver’s license for tow trucks or cargo exceeding over 26,001 pounds, many local or state agencies require the possession of a commercial driver’s towing license for every kind of towing job. Commercial licenses are only rewarded after attendance of classes, accredited training, and the successful grade of a written test as well as driving test. The major benefit of gaining a commercial driver’s license for drivers is that it leads to an increase in employment opportunities for them.

Hours and Abilities

Local, state, and federal licensing agencies require that tow truck drivers are in good physical health states. Tow truck drivers are required to qualify a selection of assessment tests that measure vision, hearing, response time, and physical fitness. Many employers also issue required drug tests in order to qualify for their insurance policy. Tow truck drivers often work strange overnight hours, as well as during weekends and holidays. Anyone interested in being a tow truck driver has to be willing to work according to this strange schedule, and even work overtime sometimes.

Official Certificates

Many organizations exist like the Towing and Recovery Association of America, as well as the Professional Truck Driver institute that can provide tow truck driver certification. While certification isn’t always required by employers, official certification can vastly increase employment chances for prospective drivers, so it’s a common professional route. These non-governmental organizations also require passing of coursework or maintaining current employment as a tow truck driver, filling out an application, payment of a fee, or the successful passing of a nationally administered credential exam.