Volvo admits dealer fiddled truck wei t
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by Guy Sheppard Volvo has admitted that parts from its trucks were secretly removed to meet a customer's weight requirements and then replaced, leaving the vehicles overweight as they went into service.
An internal investigation revealed that at least one dealer removed items such as bunk bed mattresses to reduce the specified weight of unladen trucks bought by subcontractors of Rugby Cement.
Volvo spokesman Richard Smith says no more than four trucks were supplied in this way and none of the parts concerned were related to safety. "What we have done is look at the matter internally, reviewed it and put some instructions out to our network to ensure it does not happen again," he adds.
Smith says customers would not have been put at a commercial disadvantage because the amount of cement carried by the vehicles was not determined by their specified weight but by what they weighed before and after loading. Although one order for one truck was cancelled as a result of the investigation, he says Volvo continues to enjoy good relations with Rugby.
The investigation was trig gored by a report in Commercial Motor (CM 1-7 Junel, revealing that MAN Sheffield had removed important components from trucks to meet Rugby's weight limit of 7.7 tonnes.
In the case of the MAN dealership the parts were alleged to have included brake shoes and anti-roll bars but these were replaced before the trucks went into service. As with the Volvos. there was no question of safety being compromised in service.
Rugby subsequently reweighed all the trucks used by its 106 independent contract hauliers and found 25% of them were overweight (CM 7-13 Sept).