It's been said that eating breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Incorporating it into your morning routine refuels your body, jump starts your day and lays the foundation for life-long health benefits.

The morning routine you perform with your full-size excavator is equally important to the health of your machine. What you do during the first 15 to 30 minutes of each day pays big dividends in terms of increasing productivity, maintaining residual value and lowering operating costs. Incorporating additional weekly, monthly and annual scheduled maintenance only adds to machine longevity.

Key areas for preventive maintenance fall into three main categories: engines, hydraulics and undercarriage systems. A detailed and specific time line of scheduled maintenance for each area can be found in your owner's manual.

"A lot of money goes into research, development and engineering to determine at what intervals filters are to be changed, what items are to be greased and at what hour interval," notes Bill Metzger, product sales instructor, Doosan Infracore. "Also, using a maintenance checklist will help identify any items that need to be addressed. Planned maintenance is always less expensive than reactive maintenance."

Maintain the engine
Maintenance has become increasingly important with the move to Tier III engines.

"These new engines are more susceptible to damage caused by contamination," says David Pooley, Hyundai Construction. A filtration system for today's high-pressure fuel and sensitive pumping systems goes down to as low as 2 microns, compared to no limit for earlier models. "The maintenance schedule in the manual lays out a very comprehensive change-out period, and contractors need to stick with those recommendations," he says. "If they do, they will get the best life out of the engine, as well as fuel and hydraulic systems."