Can you work nights, around our route schedules?

We typically run nights and weekends, and we build the pattern around your dispatch rather than ours. It is also the right time chemically: the architectural aluminium guide says not to clean hot, sun-heated metal, because the reactions run fast and uneven and the streaking can stay. On a truck that has stood in the sun, that rules out much of the day.

Will this lift our wraps and decals?

Not at the numbers the film maker publishes: 80 bar at most, a spray pattern no narrower than 40 degrees, at least 30 cm of standoff, water no hotter than 60 degrees Celsius, and cleaners kept between pH 3 and 11. What lifts a graphic is excessive pressure driving water under the film. The honest caveat is that an edge already letting go was already letting go before the wash; tell us where the wrap is lifting.

What happens to the wash water?

It follows whatever arrangement your site already has, so tell us what that is: where your drains run, which surfaces the water may reach, whether there is a wash pad. We do not carry tanks to collect the water and take it off site; if that is what your yard requires, you need a contractor equipped for it and we will say so plainly. The EPA names fleet operations as a source of polluted wash water reaching storm drains, and storm drains run to local waterways untreated. That is worth knowing before anyone starts.

Fleet washing

A tractor-trailer is not one surface. Bare polished aluminium, wheels with a factory finish, painted panels and vinyl graphic film can sit within a few feet of each other, and the published limits for cleaning them do not agree — so the product that suits one of them is the wrong product for the next. We are fully mobile and we work at your yard, typically at night and on weekends, and that is a chemistry decision before it is a convenience.

One truck, four finishes

The American Architectural Manufacturers Association cleaning guide for finished aluminium opens with a step that comes before any cleaner: correctly identify the finish before selecting a cleaning method. It is written for building metal rather than for trucks, and its order holds either way: identify first, choose second. On a truck that ordering matters, because one tractor-trailer is not one surface. Bare polished tanks, wheels with a factory finish, painted cab and body panels and vinyl graphic film can sit within arm's reach of each other, and every one of them carries its own published limits. Those limits are not the same, and in places they contradict. Something strong enough to cut road film off a painted panel can fall outside what the film maker permits on the decal beside it. Aluminium is corroded by strong alkali about as readily as by strong acid, so a cleaner that is not acidic is not for that reason a safe cleaner here. One product for the whole vehicle is the error. One family of product stays off our trucks entirely. Truck-wash cleaners, rust removers and aluminium brighteners often contain hydrofluoric acid or ammonium bifluoride, and a federal public-health study of documented burns in this trade found that less hazardous substitutes exist — it says substitution could have averted those injuries, and credits that conclusion to a source it cites rather than reaching it alone. Nobody requires us to leave those acids out. We do, and that is why.

The graphics come with published numbers

Graphics come with hard published limits. The 3M instruction bulletin for its films and sheetings sets a maximum of 80 bar, a spray pattern no narrower than 40 degrees, a standoff of at least 30 cm and water no hotter than 60 degrees Celsius. It also says why: excessive pressure drives water under the film and lifts the graphic. That is the failure mode, and it is a slow one. A wrap does not come off in a sheet — an edge lets go, water gets behind it, and the next wash takes a little more. We read the metric edition of that bulletin, so those are the manufacturer figures. Converted, 80 bar is about 1,160 psi and 60 degrees Celsius is 140 Fahrenheit, but that arithmetic is ours rather than theirs, and you should know which is which. Chemistry has a band as well: cleaners used on graphics are to stay between pH 3 and 11, neither strongly acidic nor strongly alkaline. And on brush against touchless, the same bulletin records risks on both sides. What protects a wrap is pressure, pattern, distance, temperature and pH, not the name of the method.

Why the work happens at night

On washing in full sun, the aluminium guide gives an instruction rather than a preference: do not chemically clean hot, sun-heated metal, because the reactions become highly accelerated and non-uniform, and the streaking that results may be such that the surface cannot be restored to its original appearance. That is not a warning about a poor result you can wash again. It is a warning about a finish you do not get back. Alcoa turns the same idea into a number: its cleaning guide requires the wheels to be below 95 degrees Fahrenheit before anyone starts. Stand on a Central Florida yard at two in the afternoon in July and put your hand on a south-facing panel; that is the whole argument. So the schedule is part of the method rather than a courtesy. We are fully mobile and we work at your yard, not at a wash bay you have to send units to, and we typically run nights and weekends, because that is when the metal is cool. We connect to your spigot and fill a large onboard reserve, so a truck either arrives full or draws from your water on site. Past that, the pattern is whatever your contract needs: a fixed night each week, a rotation, or the whole yard in one pass.

Where the water goes, and what we are not set up to do

The EPA names fleet operations specifically as a source of polluted wash water reaching storm drains, and it says plainly that storm drains discharge to local waterways with no treatment on the way. So the comfortable version — it is our own lot and it is only soap and water — is not the whole picture. What comes off a truck is road film: metals, hydrocarbons and whatever the road put there. Here is our limit, said before you have to ask. We do not carry tanks to collect the water and take it away. We are not set up for that, and a yard whose permit or lease requires the water be collected and hauled off site needs a contractor who is — you will hear that at the walkthrough rather than after the first invoice. What matters instead is the arrangement your site already has, so tell us: where your drains run, which surfaces the water may reach, whether there is a wash pad and a sanitary connection, and what your own stormwater plan says. That arrangement is yours and the decision is yours. Which one applies is something to settle before the hose comes off the reel.

Common questions

Can you wash at our yard, or do we bring the trucks to you?: We come to you. We are fully mobile, so the work happens where the units already park and nothing has to be driven anywhere. What we need on site is a spigot: we connect to it and fill a large onboard reserve, so a truck either arrives full or draws from your water while we work. If your yard has no usable water point, tell us when we walk it, because that changes the plan rather than ending it.
Can you work nights, around our route schedules?: We typically run nights and weekends, and we build the pattern around your dispatch rather than ours. It is also the right time chemically: the architectural aluminium guide says not to clean hot, sun-heated metal, because the reactions run fast and uneven and the streaking can stay. On a truck that has stood in the sun, that rules out much of the day.
Will this lift our wraps and decals?: Not at the numbers the film maker publishes: 80 bar at most, a spray pattern no narrower than 40 degrees, at least 30 cm of standoff, water no hotter than 60 degrees Celsius, and cleaners kept between pH 3 and 11. What lifts a graphic is excessive pressure driving water under the film. The honest caveat is that an edge already letting go was already letting go before the wash; tell us where the wrap is lifting.
What happens to the wash water?: It follows whatever arrangement your site already has, so tell us what that is: where your drains run, which surfaces the water may reach, whether there is a wash pad. We do not carry tanks to collect the water and take it off site; if that is what your yard requires, you need a contractor equipped for it and we will say so plainly. The EPA names fleet operations as a source of polluted wash water reaching storm drains, and storm drains run to local waterways untreated. That is worth knowing before anyone starts.

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