A proactive CV battery maintenance program and premium quality products will pay dividends in the long term.

The UK is experiencing unusually mild weather at present; Manbat alongside Johnson Controls, the company behind the VARTA brand, advise commercial vehicle fleet managers that it’s not too late to give their commercial batteries a winter fitness check to avoid a potential breakdown.

Manbat’s longstanding message to the commercial battery sector focuses on ‘total cost of ownership’. With the cost of vehicle recovery, delivery rescheduling and disappointed customers, it makes good business sense to take the associated costs of this vital component into consideration in terms of both product selection and vehicle maintenance.

Problems with the electrics are behind 30% of all breakdowns for HGVs – the biggest cause of roadside assistance – quickly racking up costs approaching four figures to get back on the road and that’s without factoring in annoyed clients.

As many fleet operators have already discovered, fitting totally maintenance free batteries significantly reduces the number of breakdowns; 1 in 4 times, electrical breakdowns are due to poorly maintained batteries. Therefore the sophisticated technology used by OE market leader Johnson Controls to make their VARTA Promotive range completely maintenance free is the obvious choice.

For those interested in these technologies VARTA batteries boast an innovative labyrinth lid, combined with calcium-silver construction and PowerFrame® grid technology which eliminates the need to top them up with water – a time consuming and costly task to those who know what it is like to spread a seemingly simple task across a large truck fleet.

So the advantage of adopting a ‘total cost of ownership’ approach to a fleet of, for example 60 vehicles, each with 2 batteries and subject to battery checking and maintenance twice a year, could be in the £6000 region per year, an important consideration in the current economic climate.