In 2023 at the annual conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, attendees offered TA Truck Service Vice President Homer Hogg a challenge, attendant to his presentation of his “Top 5 Diesel Fault Codes” and emissions issues truck owners can proactively ward off. The challenge? Develop a standardized preventive maintenance service small fleets and owner-operators can readily access in TA-Petro’s truck-service network. 

At this year’s NASTC event, held two weeks back in Nashville, Tennessee, Hogg answered the bell, detailing what he called the “SCR Ultimate PM” service offering now available throughout the network.

Homer Hogg“It’s a standard service,” he said, not billed hourly — owners can expect a four-five hour job. “If you come in once a year to get this service,” it should keep your SCR-equipped truck from breaking down over emissions issues. Even with a launch of the service that could be described as soft, generally, a few weeks before the NASTC event, “we’ve had 400 of them in the last three weeks and we just turned it on,” he added. “Fleets are coming to us left and right for it because they know the value.” 

The SCR Ultimate PM service includes the following items, also shown in the image here from Hogg’s presentation: 

**DEF Header Unit Cleaning
**DEF Fluid Quality Test — shops are oufitted with test strips for the purpose
**DEF Filter placement
**DEF System Leak Inspection — a leak test for the system
**ATS/EGR Visual Inspection
**DEF Doser/Bore Cleaning — as Hogg recommended to do once a year in both this and last year’s presentations at NASTC
**DEF Quantity Test
**DPF Regeneration
**SCR Efficiency Test — designed in part to test the effectiveness of NOx and other sensors within the system, common reasons the dashboard lights up in SCR-equipped trucks. “We’ve added equipment in our shops so that we can do this” test, Hogg said, so that “you don’t have to.”  
**Air Filter/Intake Inspection

NASTC members, he noted, would be eligible for a $50 discount on the service, now available throughout the network.

“Give shops a heads-up if you want this done,” to avoid unnecessary trips, he added. At present, the company’s got at least two trained techs who will be able to perform it at each location in the TA Petro network.

Potentially useful past emissions-related coverage:

**EPA’s diesel emissions regulations: Truck pricing, reliability impacts
**The top 5 diesel fault codes, and emissions issues you can do something about
**Diesel emissions problems; Getting the right diagnosis, and the right repair, on the first shop visit 
**Delete emissions problems without deleting the system
**Fuel treatments increasingly part of owner-operators’ PM routine to ward off emissions issues