Car Insurance

Winter will be here soon enough indeed. Once, Winter is in full
swing there are serious issues for school buses and school bus
safety. The key is preventative maintenance. Many buses blow
exhaust underneath either one or both back tires to keep warm and
melt ice and snow after they stop to get traction. School Buses
Must Be Prepared For Winter Driving otherwise buses get stuck in
route or accidents can occur. Many times there is no sense in
using buses on some days meaning if no one can get there, why
have school that day at all; All the children Left Behind?

School districts are taking the threat of snow and ice seriously
during winter, preparing the buses for winter driving conditions
in Oregon.

http://www.koin.com/webnews/2004/20040105_buspreps.shtml

One of the most important things you can do of course is to wash
these buses and to do it correctly. Many times a good pressure
washing company can assist in routine maintenance cleaning of
frames to make sure the road salt and such get off the buses
which can cause excessive wear to things like brakes. Magnesium
Chloride is a huge issue on winter roads: This years Winter will
cost government agencies 2 Billion in plowing and spreading salt
and chemicals on roads for safety.

It will cost the environmental clean-up and corrosion damage to
the trucking Industry 5 million. Some of that will be spent in
Truck detailing centers in places like Detroit, Chicago, Denver,
Green Bay, Cleveland, New York and Boston. What do they put on
the roads? Under 25 degrees Fahrenheit, they use Calcium
Chloride, it generates heat when it hits moisture and melts ice
and snow, giving off a little advection fog. Calcium Magnesium
Acetate 20 degrees-Liquid deicer, limestone and acetic, best for
bridges and other areas to reduce corrosion to prevent loss of
structural integrity.

Calcium Magnesium Propionate-Powder form made from farm products,
cheap and only $300 per ton. Still undergoing tests due to
environmental problems, which may be associated with it.
Magnesium Chloride 5 degrees to negative twenty-Does not hurt
concrete, 40% less chloride into environment, comes in either
solid or liquid, liquid preferred, Potassium Chloride- 25 degrees
to 12 degrees-Similar to urea. Good deicer and fertilizer. Smells
terrible later. Sand-good traction; but major mess later.
Environmentally okay, after all it is only sand, sand blasts
trucks and screws up paint. Sodium Chloride-15 to negative six
degrees-deices, often mixed with sand and salt applications. They
call it road salt or you have heard the term rock salt. Urea is
used in -25 degrees to 11 degrees- Looks like small white
pellets, used usually as a mixture to save costs with other
de-icers. Note the freezing temperature is often a factor of
altitude and wind chill. What is the trucking Industry doing
about this problem?

Manufacturers such as freightliner is using robots to put on
special adhesive to prevent corrosion between parts. More
stainless steels are being used and other alloys with nickel
content. New primers and coatings are being used available from
PPG as well as new glass and ceramic coatings such as the NASA
formula used and sold by Adsil.

Resins and sealers are used by some to seal components and body
parts. Anti-static discharge points are put in strategic parts on
trucks. PeterBuilts all come with underbody splash shields now.
Mack has galvanized cabs and undercoating on fuel tanks.
Transport Topics in another related article in 2004 quoted fleet
managers as saying increased washing frequency was by for the
best preventative maintenance and was the main advise of fleet
owners and managers to prevent corrosion. Many times part of the
strategy of a deicer application is to allow the trucks to spread
it around and mix it correctly. So the application means just
dumping it on the ground and letting the trucks mix it. And the
buses and trucks are not alone in this problem. Think on it.