Hood & Exhaust Cleaning for Food Trucks

Scale a restaurant exhaust system down into a truck and every distance shrinks except the fire risk. The fryer sits inches below the hood. The duct run is a few feet, not a few storeys — grease that would condense along a long duct in a building lands concentrated in one short section. And the whole system spends its life on the road, where vibration works baffle filters loose and shakes hardened buildup free exactly where you don't want it.

Add the way trucks actually cook — fryers and flat-tops running hard through a short service window — and a mobile kitchen can load its exhaust with grease faster than a full-size restaurant line. Small system, short distances, heavy output: that's why truck fires escalate so fast, and why the cleaning schedule matters more here, not less.

NFPA 96 covers commercial cooking operations that produce grease-laden vapors — and your fryer doesn't care that the kitchen has wheels. Given how hard most trucks cook, the quarterly high-volume tier is the realistic starting point for a working truck, not the semi-annual schedule a typical sit-down kitchen runs.

Your AHJ, commissary, or permit office may layer its own requirement on top of the standard, and inspection findings can move you up a tier. If you're not sure where your rig lands, the high-volume cleaning frequency guide breaks the tiers down — or describe your cooking line when you request a quote and we'll tell you where it sits.

For a mobile vendor, the paperwork is half the point. Every cleaning ends with a dated service report describing exactly what was cleaned, before-and-after photos taken inside the system, and a certificate recording that the work was performed to the NFPA 96 standard with the next service due date. Keep them in the truck's file — when renewal comes around or an insurer asks for proof of maintenance, you hand over records instead of receipts.

Budgeting for the year? Our guide to what it costs covers typical industry ranges and what actually moves the price for a compact system like yours. If your fan is caked or the truck has sat between owners, start with exhaust fan cleaning and a full-system reset.