Are you carrying out preventive maintenance inspections and brake testing your commercial vehicles regularly?
If you own or operate a commercial vehicle or a fleet of commercial vehicles then it is essential that you carry out regular preventative maintenance inspections and regularly brake test your vehicles. It is your responsibility that your vehicles are in a roadworthy condition and safe to drive. Aside from the safety benefits and it being your legal obligation, well maintained vehicles reduce the likelihood of your vehicles encountering delays from unscheduled downtime, unsafe vehicles being impounded and additional delays at roadside inspections. Brake testing is an integral part of a thorough and correctly done preventative maintenance inspection for obvious reasons. A visual inspection of the braking system, while necessary, can only tell you so much while a brake test can quickly tell you if your vehicles braking system is operating correctly and whether your vehicle can be safely driven on the road or not.
Preventative maintenance inspections can be outsourced to a 3rd party company or carried out in house by a suitably qualified person. There are big cost savings to be made by carrying out PMI’s in house. Here at Assetminder Garage Equipment we sell all the equipment necessary to carry out your own vehicle inspections including pre-fabricated inspection pits, roller brake testers, pit jacks and joint play detectors, side slip tester and much more.
Some of the benefits to installing a brake tester and carrying out your own inspections include:
Preventative maintenance doesn’t mean bringing your vehicle into the workshop and repairing what you see. It means being on the look-out for things that might go wrong with the vehicle so that risks do not occur as a result of the deterioration or failure of a component or safety system on the vehicle. A combination of an inspection pit and joint play detectors are crucial to this process and to spot deterioration in wearable parts. Preventative maintenance is systematic detection, correction and prevention of failures before they become actual or major faults in contrast to corrective maintenance. Your preventative maintenance programme for each vehicle should be thorough, regular and frequent enough to meet the manufacturer's guidelines and that the vehicle is safe and roadworthy. Pre-planned preventative maintenance along with daily walk around checks help ensure that vehicles are maintained in a roadworthy condition.
