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Page 9
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HGV driver Lucy Radley favours continuous vehicle checks rather than doing everything first-thing.
The other day a white van swooped into Hamilton truck park and disgorged two spanner-men from VOSA. As we're the kind of firm that gets dragged into the checkpoint at Beattock by accident, only to get spat back out the other end again when they see who they've got, I was surprised to find that of the three wagons this pair picked out, mine was the first.
I had a bit of time to play with and got the expected clean bill of health, but it was still unsettling. If something had been amiss, it would have been me who had to explain myself when ringing in to break the news to my manager. Yet another good reason to do your daily checks.
The thing is, how? Obviously, if you drive different vehicles every day, doing the checks first thing is the way forward. But as a tramper, I don't do that. For starters, I can't see the point in faffing around in the dark at silly o'clock when I can guarantee that nothing much has changed since I pulled the curtains 11 hours before. As long as the tyres are up, the fuel cap intact: the dog clip in and the box still locked: that'll do for me.
Everything else gets monitored on an ongoing basis; checking my treads, for example, is something to do while filling up. I listen for air leaks every time I walk past. I know the vehicle well enough that I'm the first tc notice if something isn't quite right. And I can't see the point of doing a 'nil' defect report at the beginning of the day surely it's better to do it at the end when nothing has gone wrong, rathei than end up with two contradictory chits when C problem appears at dinnertime?
Day drivers may argue that I should be put up against a wall and shot because I don't feel the need to do everything at 5am. I'm sorry, but VOSA thinks otherwise, because my swooping traffic examiner told me he thought my approach was perfectly sensible. In fact, he thought it was preferable, since it means the driver doesn't just ignore vehicle condition for the rest of the shift. All I need to do now is to wash it more often than I'm absolutely forced to and my fleet manager might be happy as well.