Common ways your lubricants get contaminated before they’re in your truck

Speaker 1:

CCJs 10 44 is brought to you by Chevron Delo, heavy duty diesel engine oil. Now there's even more reasons to choose Delo. The brand new oil and fluid you're putting into your truck probably isn't as clean as it could be. You're watching CCJs 10 44, a weekly episode that brings you the latest trucking industry news and updates from the editors of CCJ. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications so you'll never miss an installment of 10 44. Hey everybody, welcome back. I'm Jason Canon and my co-host is Mac Holt. Whenever you buy and use something that's brand new, the expectation is that that given product is in the best possible condition that could ever be. And when that comes to truck lubricants, that's not always the case.

Speaker 2:

Mishandling lubricants or poor onsite storage practices are two ways. Fleets are unintentionally contaminating fluids before they ever make it into the truck and accelerating component wear.

Speaker 3:

The number one enemy of that diesel engine is dirt. Number two is water. Would they need to do whatever they can when they're putting oil in that engine to make sure it's clean, iso clean that's down the road? Look at your jugs, look at your five gallon bucket. Look at your transfer can. They should look at how am I getting the oil into my truck? What does that thing look like? What do my tanks look like? Are they breathing shop air or atmospheric air? What do I mean by that? All air has dust in it and it has moisture in it. What are our enemies? Number one enemy is dirt. Number two, enemy is water. The air, I don't care where you look, it's got little dust particles and remember the particles that we're worried about. You can't even see most filter systems. Even the truck filter system has, well, it has an oil.

They do a pretty good job getting the big particles, but the ones that really do the damage are the ones that get through the truck filter and they're very, very small. As I mentioned before, they're in that 10 micron range. You can't see them. We can only see the 40 microns. Those are the ones. Those are the ones we, so when we come in and look at a shop, we'll go in, we do what we call a best in class assessment, which is we look at, okay, show me everywhere. Where do you store the oil? Where do you receive the oil? How do you transfer the oil? What do your tanks look like? Do your tanks have desk and breathers on 'em? Are they breathing? Is the lid flopped open so that anything, all atmosphere can come in there. We look at all of that. We've got to take care of the vent. We've got to take care of the fill. We got to make sure it's not breathing shop air. And then on only then do we look at all this iso clean stuff that we've been talking about because if you're not doing all the first part of that stuff, the rest of it just falls on its face.

Speaker 1:

A lot of fleets with bulk tanks have an inline filter that new oil passes through before it finds its way into the truck, and that's a good idea, but it's not necessarily cleaning the oil.

Speaker 4:

There's different levels of filtration. There's different micron size and beta ratio on those filters. So really they could be doing more harm than good. They could be over filtering, they could be pulling out additives. Things that we see initially, one of the first things that usually get pulled out are the foam inhibitors, but you could be doing over filtration. That's the thing with what Chevron's done is we've tested to know what's the limits? What size filter should you be using, what temperature should you be filtering at, and then how many cycles before you start doing damage to the oil. And so we know what can and can't be done. Other thing by doing filtration there on your own is the filter could get plugged. So you filter so much. Now you've got a plugged filter and all these filtration carts, they have a bypass. And so instead of running the lubricant oil through the filter, it just goes around it.

So someone may think they're filtering and all they're doing is just moving oil around. They're not doing any kind of filtration. And so one other aspect that if you're doing your own filtration, you think about is the manpower. So you've got to have someone operating the card and keeping eye on it, things like that. That person could be better served potentially doing something else there that's going to add more value than babysitting this filtration cart. So while a lot of people do their own filtration, there is a better way to do it so that way you're not potentially doing more harm than good. You're not taking up a resource that could be used for something else and overall it's going to work better for you.

Speaker 3:

In simple terms, we have a recipe for every product.

As Chad said, what temperature do you filter it out? Most people just filter it out, whatever the temperature is in the shop. Well, I'll tell you right now, it's wrong. You may be stripping stuff out of there that you don't want out of there. As Chad mentioned, how many cycles, if you clean hydraulic oil, you need a weigh different micron rating than you do engine oil. And so I'm just adding to what Chad just said there is you've got to follow the recipe and that's what we've done here when we're doing it and realizing what we're doing here is we're taking brand new oil and we're filtering it with this recipe to a cleanliness code that the engine manufacturer or the transmission manufacturer or the rear end manufacturer wants. That's what we're doing. Hold it from a very high level.

Speaker 2:

Onsite storage is really common at trucking fleets. So Gene has some best practice advice. He tells us what they are after a word from 10 44 sponsor Chevron lubricants.

Speaker 5:

We serve customers from Birmingham, Alabama to the Gulf Coast, so our people and our trucks are booked solid all day. There is no slack in our schedules. These trucks can't break down. I choose an engine oil that takes care of the number one issue with our engines emissions, so we don't have to worry about DPF clogging. I choose the engine oil that keeps our trucks hauling. I choose Delo 600 a DF.

Speaker 3:

You look at the top of the drum and there's a three quarter inch bung and a two inch bung in the top of that drum. And you know what? They do not stop water from getting in. Those things will breathe. Now you say, okay, there's a seal on that. Well, what does that seal keep out? It keeps out driftwood. That's about it. On the top of that drum is a three quarter inch swimming pool, and when it rains, that water sits there, it gets warm, the vapors go out, gets cool. It sucks that water in. Now, just this last summer I was up in Alaska. The definition of Alaska, it's summer is it's hot, it's cold, it's warm, it's cool. It rains on and on and on. Two inches of water in the bottom of that drum, and so we've got to be careful how we store it. What do we do? We'd say, well, if you got to store it outside, then put it on an angle, maybe put a two by four or a four by four under one side or a brick, and then put the BS at three o'clock at nine o'clock so the water drains off the side.

Speaker 1:

The oil needs to breathe in storage obviously, but there's a right and a wrong way to circulate that air.

Speaker 3:

So this desk breather in this fill in this picture, this is an outside tank. A lot of your customers are going to have a tank for their oil that's outside, but the breather is breathing all the, taking out the particulate, taking out the humidity, and they also look at that cap on there. That's a pressure cap. It holds a pounds or two, so it will force it to breathe through that. That is a good first step. If you're trying to improve the oil storage that you've got every time you touch oil, it gets dirtier. It comes out of the refinery, it goes into tanks, into rail cars, into trucks, into totes, into drums, and then finally it gets into the piece of equipment. By the time you actually get it in your trucks, it's probably been touched like eight times and every time you touch it, it can get dirtier. Be aware that we need to keep atmosphere out. We need to keep that dirt and that moisture out of there.

Speaker 2:

Once a fleet has insured, it's doing everything properly locally, there's an extra step carriers can take. ISO Clean is a certified lubricant program that Chevron developed roughly a decade ago to help meet OEM cleanliness requirements and extend the life of equipment.

Speaker 4:

What that is, is we are able to take heavy duty engine oils, hydraulic oils, a lot of different things, and clean them or filter them to the cleanliness specification that that equipment manufacturer recommends for the engine or differential or whatever it may be because of we stand alone in being able to certify and saying, Hey, Chevron stands behind the cleanliness level of this lubricant. That's really where ISO Clean came from. It was a need that was in the market and we wanted to meet that need or fill that need.

Speaker 1:

How do you clean an oil while still preserving all the additives and the other stuff that protects all the moving parts in a truck?

Speaker 3:

What do we do? We bring brand new oil and we filter it before we bring it to your customer. That's one of the things that ISO clean is as well, because I don't care whose oil it is, it's not clean to the OEM spec. So we filter it before we bring it to you so that when you put it in your truck, in your engine or in your transmission maybe or in your rear end, that it is filtered to a cleanliness level of the OEM.

Speaker 2:

It's important to note here that we're not talking about recycling oil or cleaning used oil. This is new oil right out of the jug or your bulk tank. So if oil can be cleaner, why isn't it cleaner before it gets to the end user? Gene explains,

Speaker 3:

The dirtiest jug I ever tested was a brand new jug off an OE M1 of the manufacturer's shelf, and it was so dirty off the chart. It's because during the bottling process and running it through pipes and hoses and into machines and into bottles, those bottles are blow mold or injection mold. There's dust particles that get in there and what it is, it's little bitty pieces of sandpaper you can't see. That's the thing is you cannot look at oil and tell if it's clean because the clearances between metal parts as they're moving is somewhere around the 10 micron range. We can only see the 40, so we can't even see the stuff that's really doing all the damage, but all of that stuff gets in there. It's so hard to clean out. It's so costly to clean out that nobody's been able to really come up with a good way to do it.

Speaker 1:

Now, you can't just walk into a retailer and grab some ISO clean oil right off the rack, so you'll have to work with a distributor to get in the program.

Speaker 4:

What they'll do is they'll come out and they'll start by just doing an assessment of your operation. What are the needs? What are you trying to accomplish? Is there any issues? So we just don't want to come in and start selling you oil. We want to understand what is your operation? How are you operating today? What are your goals and objectives? What are you trying to get to? And then we'll put together a comprehensive plan to help you get there. ISO clean could be part of that, but it could be also other things because we have this mantra of start clean, stay clean, and so it may be around storage and handling practices. Maybe it's on your top off containers, things like that, hoses and reels. So we really want to come in and understand how you're operating today and then implement some best practices to ensure that you're making this investment for clean oil.

Let's make sure we keep it clean and we're helping you start clean. ISO clean is the end result at the end, but there's baby steps that I mentioned before. You can do just around, we've talked about how you're topping off, how you're topping off your trucks and the containers that you're using and the hose reels, and if you do have a bulk tank, how you're filtering the bulk tank with the desk again, breather. So there's a lot of steps that you can take to help clean up your facility before you even think about putting clean oil into your equipment. And so if those are things that we can help with, Chevron and your local Chevron distributor can help you with and put together an action plan to get you going in the right direction to get you a best in class facility so that you are keeping everything clean. You know what you're putting in, your equipment's clean, and you're doing all the right things to get the longest life out of your equipment.

Speaker 1:

That's it for this week's 10 44. You can read more on ccj digital.com. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter and stay up to date on the latest in trucking industry news and trends. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know in the comments below. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications so you can catch us again next week.