Keeping your trucks on the road is crucial to transportation companies in America. However, with so many roadside assistance options available for semi-truck drivers, choosing the right one for your business can be difficult. Today, we’ll wade through the numerous options and give you a side by side comparison of the most popular aspects of 24-hour roadside assistance programs with the intention of making your decision easier and clearer.
There are several areas you should both consider and focus on when choosing the right roadside assistance program for your semi-trucks: time coverage, towing distance, location, vehicle type and class covered, specific benefits, additional perks, and most importantly, reputation for outstanding service.
At the end of the day, having a roadside assistance program available for your drivers has the potential to save your trucking company thousands of dollars. This is often the case with just one call to your roadside assistance provider. So, the importance of a roadside assistance program is universally understood, however, let’s look at the criteria for comparing the roadside assistance programs available to truckers.
Time Coverage
While there’s never a convenient time for a commercial vehicle to break down on the road, problems can occur at anytime and anywhere. When choosing a roadside assistance program, you want to be certain you’ll always have coverage while you are on the road. Therefore, any companies that have one to ten fleet vehicles anywhere in the United States at any given time will want to choose plans that offer 24-hour coverage, 365 days out of the year. Try and find a plan that best matches your company’s hours of operation.
Towing Distance & Location
You’ll want to ensure you know the exact towing distance allowed by any roadside assistance program up front. Some companies put limits on how far they will tow per disablement. Speaking of distance, do your drivers deliver to Canada or Mexico? If you do cross the border, double check that your roadside assistance program covers you when you are North or South of the border.
Type of Fleet Vehicle
Some roadside assistance programs focus more exclusively on smaller, light-duty vehicles, while others, such as the Certified Diesel Solutions 24-hour roadside assistance focuses on roadside issues with Heavy Duty, Class 7 and 8 vehicles. Choosing the right roadside assistance means ensuring that the company you choose specializes in the same type of fleet vehicles you operate.
Specific Benefits
Every roadside assistance program is unique in their service offering, so digging down into the specific details of the plan is important. It’s not impossible to find plans that offer unlimited towing and coverage on a vehicle no matter the driver if you look around enough. These programs offer immense flexibility, but you should also look at the other services offered such as battery jump start, lockout and lost key services, fuel delivery, winching/extricating, mobile mechanic services, emergency oil, fluid, and water delivery, emergency personal assistance, and trip routing services. A good roadside assistance program will offer all the above.
Additional Perks
You may stumble across some plans that offer hotel and travel discounts. The additional perks may add value to your overall purchase of a roadside assistance program if the discounts apply to items your company already provides to drivers. Additional perks of roadside assistance programs can include everything from concierge services at restaurants, lodging, and truck stops to the Road America’s Savings Connection Program which offers discounts on prescriptions, car rentals, and theme parks. While these perks may not deliberately affect your bottom line, it can encourage content drivers which decreases driver turnover tremendously.
Company Reputation
When you operate commercial vehicles, you want to choose a fleet vehicle roadside assistance program with the expertise to reduce downtime…period. You can obtain a good idea of the reputability of roadside assistance program by how long they have been in business, if they have a niche that they specialize in, by talking to others in the industry, and by doing research on social media reviews.
24-Hour Roadside Assistance
Choosing a roadside assistance program for fleet vehicles removes the overhead burden from your company and gives you access to roadside services at pre-negotiated savings. Trucks that break down while in route to customer delivery can spell disaster for customer service and customer relations. By locating and fixing issues on the road, your drivers have less downtime, improving the overall bottom line of your business and the reputation of your business to get the job done.
No matter what issue you encounter out there on the road, our 24-hour roadside assistance, ASE certified staff has the tools, diagnostics equipment, and expertise to get your problem solved and get you back on the road.
Contact us today to talk about our roadside assistance program by calling 865-964-6598 or online HERE.