Violations that put your trucks out of service hurt your business and cost money. Brake violations are all too common, and they create a hazard out on the road for your trucks and drivers as well as everyone else. That’s why events that focus on brake safety are so important. This year’s Brake Safety Week found plenty of problems.
2018 Brake Safety Week
During the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s Brake Safety Week, inspectors across U.S. and Canada checked more than 35,000 commercial vehicles. The majority of commercial vehicles on the road require antilocking brake systems (ABS) so it’s the main focus for most inspectors.
Nearly 5,000 or 14 percent of all vehicles were pulled out of service for brake violations during the inspection blitz. Here’s the breakdown:
- 26,143 air-braked power units requiring ABS — 2,176 (8.3 percent) violations
- 17,857 trailers — 2,224 (13.5 percent) violations
- 5,354 hydraulic-braked trucks requiring ABS — 234 (4.4 percent) violations
Brake violations continue to be an ongoing problem for many fleets. Last year’s event lasted only one day and 14 percent of trucks were pulled out of service. In June, a three day International inspection blitz found that brake violations were the top reason vehicles were pulled out of service, accounting for more than 28 percent of all violations.
How Gorilla Safety Can Help
Maintenance violations, especially those involving brakes, wreak havoc on your schedules and your bottomline. Keeping up with maintenance needs and repairs can be difficult and stressful, but they don’t have to be. Not when you can make the maintenance process easier and your record-keeping automatic with the Gorilla Safety fleet management system. Your driver and mechanic can communicate directly, inspection reports can be delivered electronically, alerts set, and, even better, you can check the progress whenever you need to.
Here’s how it works:
Drivers know their trucks, and they know when things aren’t working right. When they report the need for a repair, the eDVIR notifies your mechanic automatically. Your mechanic can then review the truck and decide if any repairs are needed — and how urgent they are. If they are, they enter a disposition. Once the repairs are made, your driver is notified, signs off on the repair and gets back on the road. No more keeping up with maintenance requests or following up with anyone. No more miscommunications or missed opportunities between a driver and the maintenance department. Even better, no more out of service violations for brakes, lights, or any other issues.
At Gorilla Safety, we make fleet management less stressful and more cost-efficient. We’ve automated a lot of the most important functions of keeping a fleet on the road so you can get back to hauling shipments down the road. We help fleets reduce maintenance violations as well as other wasteful costs that used to feel inevitable. Our system is intuitive and makes managing the entire fleet and individual vehicles much easier. Contact us today to learn how we can help you manage your fleet.
