Posted on 8/3/2026
The Real Cost of Cutting Corners on Fleet Vehicle Maintenance in Clackamas, OR It always happens on the morning the schedule cannot absorb it. A service van pulls out of the yard before six, loaded and routed, headed north on I-205 with five stops stacked behind it and a customer in Gresham expecting someone by seven-thirty. Rain is coming down the way it does here in November, steady and unhurried, and traffic is already backed up before the Sunnyside exit. The driver rides the brakes through a mile of stop-and-go, and somewhere in there the pedal starts feeling longer than it did yesterday. By the time the van reaches the merge, the pedal is going most of the way to the floor. The driver gets it onto the shoulder and makes the call nobody wants to make. That day is gone. Tomorrow probably is too. What happens in the hours after that phone call tells you almost everything about how a business is actually run. Some operators scramble. They call whoever can take the vehicle fastes ... read more