Iron does not count miles. It counts hours.
The meter on the dash is the only honest record of how hard a machine has worked. We service to that number at your yard or on the job, so oil, filters and grease stop being the thing that everybody meant to get to last month.
- Open 24 hours, seven days
- No hourly minimum
- A price before work starts
- Your yard or the job site
Spending money on a machine that is working fine
That is genuinely the hard part of this. Nobody hesitates to pay for a repair, because the machine is already stopped and the cost of doing nothing is obvious. Maintenance asks the opposite. The excavator is running, the loader started this morning, the work is getting done, and somebody is proposing a bill for a service the machine is not visibly asking for. It feels like optional spending, which is exactly why it slides.
What makes it not optional is the way heavy equipment fails. These machines rarely deteriorate gently. A hydraulic system stays fine, stays fine, stays fine, and then a pump that has been circulating contaminated fluid for six hundred hours comes apart in an afternoon and takes metal through the rest of the circuit with it. A final drive runs quietly on low oil until the planetary gears grind themselves into the case. The warning period between healthy and expensive is short and often silent, and by the time a machine tells you something is wrong, the cheap version of that repair has usually already passed.
So the honest way to frame a service is as the price of not finding out. Filters and fluid cost a fraction of the components they protect, and the gap between those two numbers on a large machine is not small. That is the entire arithmetic, and the machine running well today has no bearing on it.
What a visit coversEngine oil and filters, hydraulic and final drive oil, fuel and air filtration, full greasing, coolant condition, belts, batteries and a walk around the undercarriage.
The numberA price before work starts, covering travel and the service together, with no hourly minimum and nothing added to the job unless you agree to it first.
Where we come toYards and job sites through Napa and Solano, out along I-80 and Highway 12 into Sonoma, Contra Costa and Alameda. Coverage by county.
Why greasing is the interval that gets skipped and costs the most
Grease is the least glamorous item on any service list. It is also the one whose absence writes the largest bills. Pins and bushings on an excavator boom, the loader linkage, the coupler wedges and the swing bearing all carry enormous loads across very small contact areas, and the only thing between those surfaces is a film that has to be renewed constantly. Skip it and the pin starts to wear the bushing oval. Once that happens you are no longer replacing a pin and a bushing, you are dealing with an elongated bore in a fabricated structure, which means line boring or welding and machining on a boom that was fine a few hundred hours ago.
The same logic runs through filtration. A fuel filter left past its interval eventually restricts enough to starve a high pressure injection system, and those components are among the most expensive things on a diesel engine. An air filter that has gone from dirty to loaded starts letting fine material past the seal and into cylinders. Hydraulic filters do the same job for the pump and valve bank. In every one of those cases the consumable is trivially cheap and the component it protects is not, which is the whole argument for intervals in one sentence.
Nobody ever called me at midnight about a filter change they had done. They call about the one they put off.
Patrick Freeman, owner
The intervals that keep a machine out of the repair column
Different systems age on different clocks. A service visit works through all of them rather than only the one that happens to be obvious.
Scheduled service visits
A standing interval worked around your operating hours rather than around a shop calendar.
Hydraulic fluid and filters
Condition checked as well as level, with filters changed before restriction starts costing a pump.
Diesel engine service
Oil, fuel filtration, air filtration and the checks that keep an injection system from paying for neglect.
Undercarriage monitoring
Track tension and wear measured over time, so replacement gets planned instead of discovered.
Coolant service
Protection level and condition, ahead of the first hot stretch rather than during it.
Diagnostics when something looks off
A service visit that turns up a real fault ends with it identified properly rather than noted and forgotten.
Seasons change what the machine needs
Equipment around here lives through two very different halves of the year, and the service list should reflect that. Going into the wet months, machines that will sit for weeks need the fuel system considered, batteries kept on charge or pulled, greasing done before the machine stops rather than after, and attention paid to where water will collect. A machine parked wet and left until March comes back with seized pins and surface corrosion in places that were fine in October.
The dry season asks different questions. Dust is the dominant enemy: air filtration loads far faster than the interval sheet assumes, radiators and oil coolers pack with fine material until a machine starts running hot under load, and cab filters clog. Cooling capacity matters more in August than any other month, and the time to find out a radiator core is half blocked is not during a heat wave with a full day of grading scheduled.
Setting up a maintenance interval
Most owners start this after one expensive surprise. It does not have to be complicated, and it does not require a contract.
- The inventoryWhat machines you run, the hours on each, and what you know about the service history. Gaps in the history are normal.
- The real duty cycleHow hard the machines actually work. Book intervals assume average conditions, and a lot of local work is not average.
- The first visitService brought current and a proper look at each unit, which is usually where the deferred items come to light.
- The findings, sortedWhat needs doing now, what is coming, and what can be watched. You decide what happens and when.
- The rhythmWe come back on hours rather than on a date, and we track when each machine is approaching its next one.
What owners want to know before committing to a schedule
If you are weighing this up against a repair you are already facing, the phone is the shortest route to an answer.
My machine has no service records at all. Where does that leave me?
In the same position as most owners of used equipment, and it is workable. We start from the hours on the meter and the condition of the machine in front of us rather than from paperwork that does not exist. Oil condition, filter state, undercarriage wear and the look of the fluids tell a reasonably honest story about how the machine has been treated. From that first visit forward there is a record, which is also worth something the day you sell it.
How do I know what interval my machine should be on?
The manufacturer schedule for that model is the starting point, and then it gets adjusted for reality. Machines working in heavy dust, running at full load most of the day, or doing short cycle work all wear faster than the book assumes. A machine that does light work a few days a week can often run the published interval comfortably. We would rather set a figure that matches how the machine is used than sell visits it does not need.
Can this be done without taking the machine out of production?
That is the main reason to have it done on site. Service can happen before the shift starts, after it ends, or on a weekend, and the machine stays where it is working. For an owner with several units we work through them in sequence around whatever is running. A service that costs you a productive day is a service you will start putting off, which defeats the point of having a schedule.
What if you find something serious during a routine service?
You hear about it as soon as we do, with a clear explanation of how urgent it genuinely is. Findings get separated into what needs attention now and what is developing, and nothing beyond the agreed service happens without you saying yes. If it is something that belongs in a shop with a hoist we will tell you that rather than starting it in your yard and leaving you with a machine in pieces.
Is scheduled service actually cheaper than fixing things when they break?
For heavy equipment, consistently yes, and the gap is wider than most people expect. The comparison people make is service cost against repair cost, but the real comparison includes the days a machine sits waiting on parts, the crew standing next to it, and the schedule that slipped. A filter and a few gallons of oil sit at one end of that arithmetic. A pump, a final drive or a boom repair sits at the other.
Do you service mixed fleets, not just one brand?
Yes. Most yards around here are mixed by accident rather than design: a couple of excavators from different makers, a loader, a skid steer, a telehandler and whatever was bought at auction. Filters and fluids differ by machine and get sourced per unit. Working across brands is normal for mobile service, and it is far more practical than sending each machine to its own dealer.
Put the machines on a schedule.
Tell us what you run and roughly what the meters say, and we will work out a sensible interval and what a first visit involves. The call reaches the mechanic, any hour of any day.
HoursMonday to Sunday, 24 hours
Based inAmerican Canyon, CA
See alsoScheduled maintenance · Undercarriage · Gallery