My mates just come 'round ours for our usual Friday chinwag & showed me this memo to all drivers that was stuffed in his pay packet yesterday.
As far as he knows, the scenario is that a recently qualified driver was out all day & failed to spot that his brakes were binding on one rear wheel of a 26t rigid. An experienced driver happened to notice that the plastic wheel nut indicators had all melted when he went over to investigate the smell !
Apparently, the inexperienced driver was told to drive the vehicle approx 5mls to the appointed workshop, the old & wizened driver stopped this from happening.
From what we can deduce from 3rd hand gossip that has travelled at least 3 depots away, the battle started because the experienced driver knew what the problem was and knew that the vehicle really shouldn’t be out on the road in that condition.
The problem is . . . this is a rogue Co’ that don’t really care much for old & wizened drivers, it much prefers young & stupid ones.
‘The decision on wether a vehicle can be moved or not is not the drivers’
It ■■■■■■■ is if I’m behind the wheel.
Hopefully it’s a poorly worded letter and what they mean is they don’t want drivers to take it upon themselves to carry on if there’s a defect.
The way it’s written though sounds as if the driver must carry on regardless of the defect if they’re told to by someone who’s not even looked at the vehicle to tell what the problem is.
An office bod will say anything to get the vehicle moving. The wording of the above is appalling and if I was asked/told to move a vehicle on a road with binding brakes I would ask for a letter stating it was safe. Put the letter in my pocket then refuse to drive the vehicle (inside depot ok). The letter would be saved for any tribunal possible after dismissal to refuse etc - if you get my gist
If I would receive something like this from employer I would go home and publish company name and letter on VOSA or DVLA or something like that Facebook or Twitter account with dots and question marks from fake profile created just for this occasion…
“NO THIRD PARTY SHOULD…”
Basically - here is paper, do not tell anyone we gave it to you or you will be in trouble… no one should know about this paper apart from me and you ok mate…
TheBorg:
My mates just come 'round ours for our usual Friday chinwag & showed me this memo to all drivers that was stuffed in his pay packet yesterday.
A Captain of Industry fraternising with a lorry driver on a Friday night?
A load of old balls. Phrased to hoodwink the naive into thinking the company has the authorization to command a driver to drive an unroadworthy vehicle to place of maintenance. They don’t have that authorization. The same thing by the book should happen if a driver refuses to drives a truck with a bust brake, or if they follow their little notice. The repair agency “should” say it needs recovered. Not “get your thickest to drive it here”. The only thing I get that’s right about it is they don’t want drivers making arrangements.
It’s all in guide to maintaining road worthiness by authors DVSA. They also wrote fifty shades of grey.
Having been on the management side of things at a haulage company I can kind of see what they are trying to say/achieve, they’ve just come across completely wrong.
I am guessing that at some point someone has refused to drive a vehicle because they believed there was a defect and it turned out it would have been OK to drive … that would be annoying, but also shows the driver is doing their job so good as well
If a driver came to me with a defect and believed they shouldn’t drive the truck, I’d go and have a look with them, we’d discuss it and I would either agree with him because he is right, or tell him why I don’t agree and hopefully he’d understand. We would discuss it and agree on the action. I suppose it helps I am a qualified HGV mechanic and would sound knowledgeable and assure the driver based on experience and knowledge.
It sounds like this lot want some bod in the office who may or may not have mechanical knowledge to over rule the driver and that is very wrong. They could at least go and have a look at the vehicle.
In the end it has to be the driver who has the final say so. Alternatively a qualified person comes and has a look and explains WHY it is OK to drive and WHY the driver has it wrong. But ultimately what can you do if someone else is willing to drive it when you aren’t.
The way our spot works is that if a driver says there’s a problem then it doesn’t leave the yard until a fitter says its OK. The driver is never questioned but merely told to fill out a defect form and take the vehicle to the garage. Works quite well. Driver isn’t left feeling like they’re being ignored, anything that subsequently then happens has blame placed on the fitter who OK’d it and there’s a paper trail to back that up, traffic office know that what is going out the yard gate is 100% or as much as can reasonably be expected.
It does help having a garage onsite open 20hrs a day though.
Conor:
The way our spot works is that if a driver says there’s a problem then it doesn’t leave the yard until a fitter says its OK. The driver is never questioned but merely told to fill out a defect form and take the vehicle to the garage. Works quite well. Driver isn’t left feeling like they’re being ignored, anything that subsequently then happens has blame placed on the fitter who OK’d it and there’s a paper trail to back that up, traffic office know that what is going out the yard gate is 100% or as much as can reasonably be expected.
It does help having a garage onsite open 20hrs a day though.
good point, but when i worked there through “Adams army” if you had a long day ahead and not willing to do nights out, you were a bit more selective over what you classed as a “defect” because by the time you’d driven to the office then down to the garage, found a bod who wasn’t supping tea you could quite easily lose an hour or so, then your pushing and cheating yourself all day to make it back.
Conor:
The way our spot works is that if a driver says there’s a problem then it doesn’t leave the yard until a fitter says its OK. The driver is never questioned but merely told to fill out a defect form and take the vehicle to the garage. Works quite well. Driver isn’t left feeling like they’re being ignored, anything that subsequently then happens has blame placed on the fitter who OK’d it and there’s a paper trail to back that up, traffic office know that what is going out the yard gate is 100% or as much as can reasonably be expected.
It does help having a garage onsite open 20hrs a day though.
good point, but when i worked there through “Adams army” if you had a long day ahead and not willing to do nights out, you were a bit more selective over what you classed as a “defect” because by the time you’d driven to the office then down to the garage, found a bod who wasn’t supping tea you could quite easily lose an hour or so, then your pushing and cheating yourself all day to make it back.
Are you saying that you’d pretend you’d not spotted a defect if it meant losing your planned finishing time?
Conor:
The way our spot works is that if a driver says there’s a problem then it doesn’t leave the yard until a fitter says its OK. The driver is never questioned but merely told to fill out a defect form and take the vehicle to the garage. Works quite well. Driver isn’t left feeling like they’re being ignored, anything that subsequently then happens has blame placed on the fitter who OK’d it and there’s a paper trail to back that up, traffic office know that what is going out the yard gate is 100% or as much as can reasonably be expected.
It does help having a garage onsite open 20hrs a day though.
good point, but when i worked there through “Adams army” if you had a long day ahead and not willing to do nights out, you were a bit more selective over what you classed as a “defect” because by the time you’d driven to the office then down to the garage, found a bod who wasn’t supping tea you could quite easily lose an hour or so, then your pushing and cheating yourself all day to make it back.
Are you saying that you’d pretend you’d not spotted a defect if it meant losing your planned finishing time?
read it how you want, not fussed either way… but i bet you don’t crawl under the vehicle and check the inside tyre walls or dual wheels
or roll the whole outfit forward half a wheel turn to check the tyre tread that was previously in contact with the ground
and if its chucking it down do you really carry out a a full and proper check??
when you’ve just rolled out of bed and cant be bothered…
how do you check the brake lights?
headlight alignment on a sunny morning
heated mirrors are working on a dry morning
the list could go on and on,
nobody is perfect and mistakes are made and defects are missed
some on purpose, others by accident,
I’m honest… I do miss some… do you??
In my humble opinion that letter does nothing to protect a driver from comebacks as we all know its a drivers responsibikity to ensure his vehicle is safe blah de blah.
What it does though is open the company directors to a poostorm of corporate manslaughter charges which would happen anyway if the worst happened. Whoever wrote the memo should be disciplined and sodomised…
Please PM me company details and I will forward to my mate at VDSA.
[Thats the Venerial Disease Suffers Association, as he has a lot of time on his hands and likes to read stuff]
scoobyears:
read it how you want, not fussed either way… but i bet you don’t crawl under the vehicle and check the inside tyre walls or dual wheels
or roll the whole outfit forward half a wheel turn to check the tyre tread that was previously in contact with the ground
and if its chucking it down do you really carry out a a full and proper check??
when you’ve just rolled out of bed and cant be bothered…
how do you check the brake lights?
headlight alignment on a sunny morning
heated mirrors are working on a dry morning
the list could go on and on,
nobody is perfect and mistakes are made and defects are missed
some on purpose, others by accident,
I’m honest… I do miss some… do you??
Please consider that you are probably best NOT suited to be responsible behind the wheel of an LGV.
I for one am not comfortable sharing the road with the likes of those who cannot understand what constitutes an acceptable check.
