As a commercial motor vehicle driver, what crosses your mind when you crest the top of the hill and you see on the horizon the flashing lights saying “Trucks Enter Inspection Station”?
I am sure your heart must skip beat as you’re pondering all of the possible scenarios. You can be lucky enough to get the green leave light to exit the Inspection Station after your truck has been weighed; on the other hand, you can be given the red park light to submit to a mechanical inspection of your vehicle. In the most extreme of cases, your vehicle can be placed out of service, and you and your employer cited for mechanical violations.
Chances are, on September 7th, 2017, your vehicle will likely be given the red park light, as the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) is having its Annual Brake Safety Day across North America.
DOT Inspectors will be primarily conducting Level IV CVSA Inspections of all braking components to mechanical standards to identify brakes that are out-of-adjustment, and other brake system violations.
As you can appreciate, the goal of this enforcement initiative is to reduce the number of accidents caused by poorly maintained brakes on trucks and trailers. In order to achieve this objective, inspectors will be conducting full brake audit at truck inspection stations, laybys and at roadside. These inspectors will be identifying and placing vehicles out of service if they have major brake defects.
New to this year’s event is that the enforcement community will be launching an outreach and educational component to assist motor carriers to better understand importance of proactive brake maintenance.
Carriers who leverage maintenance solutions, such as Fleet Complete’s Fleet Tracker, can better tackle common braking issues originating from poor driving behaviors. This includes, but is not limited to, excessive speeding, harsh braking and other behaviors that are precursors to premature wear of braking components on vehicles.
All of these types of aggressive events are logged in Fleet Track reports your managers can review to proactively address poor driving habits with each driver. The Fleet Tracker Dashboard also shows total instances of aggressive behavior on the road by driver. So there is near real-time visibility to how often and for how long any vehicle is speeding or harsh braking.
Fleet Tracker is a unique solution that also allows your managers to schedule preventative maintenance for all vehicle types in your fleet. It can be based on their odometer readings, engine hours, seasonally or a combination of all three. Your manager can also set up email or SMS reminders for your drivers for recurring vehicle service, so that your vehicles are never at an Inspection Station with brake issues.
The result is an issue free inspection with a fresh CVSA decal affixed to your vehicles by the Inspector.
So why not schedule a demo of the Fleet Tracker solution so that you and your drivers will have a peace of mind, even when the “Trucks Enter Inspection Station” lights are on!
