Fleets On Alert As One In Three Vans Suffer Brake Defects…
Fleet owners are being urged to be on alert after recent data revealed that 30% of vans have failed an MOT due to an issue with brakes in the last 12 months.
Following the data, experts are warning fleet owners to ensure that they are carrying out regular checks on vehicles to ensure they’re running safely.
Why Are We Experiencing More Issues With Vehicles?
This isn’t the first time that issues around degradation and defects have been highlighted.
In fact, the number of vehicle breakdowns reported by fleet owners has increased over the past two years…
And it’s largely down to the delays in vehicle replacement as a result of the semiconductor crisis.
Major component failures are becoming commonplace due to the semiconductor crisis, causing longer lead times for new cars and vans. Manufacturers are struggling to keep up with the level of demand, and lead times for many vehicles have doubled to almost six months.
And because the lead time has increased on new vehicles, many are either looking to used vehicles (which have increased in price) or extending the lifecycle of their vehicles…
But as vehicles reach four or five years in operation, they start to accrue some serious mileage.
With cars, vans, and HGVs now reaching more than 100,000 miles on the clock in many cases, we’re starting to see issues cropping up that could cause safety issues.
This is causing mechanical failures you wouldn’t ordinarily expect and resulting in unexpected costs for repairs. Gearboxes are the most severely impacted vehicle part, while the brakes, clutch and cambelt are being replaced where they might not otherwise have had to.
The issue is that these are expensive components to replace, and fleet owners will not have budgeted for this, particularly when they’ve already started the process of replacing vehicles.
As a result, fleets are having to spend significant sums of money on ageing vehicles, even when they know they’ll be replaced within 12 months.
What Can Fleet Owners Do To Mitigate the Risk?
Prevention is always better than cure, as they say. And in this case, that means proactive maintenance through servicing to identify issues ahead of time – it might be that you’re aware you need to replace brakes within two months, for example.
While we recognise that fleets are reluctant to have any vehicle downtime where it can be avoided, some considerations need to be made…
A few hours out of the week for a vehicle to be serviced is preferable to unplanned downtime because of a mechanical failure.
One key change fleet owners could make is to ensure that they're using vehicles with significant miles on the clock and are five or six years old for local duties rather than long-haul driving, which can add up to 1,000 miles every week.
Or it might be that more regular servicing becomes a part of your work schedule to ensure older vehicles are running safely.
How is the semiconductor shortage impacting your fleet? Are you due to begin your replacement cycle? If so, have you thought about when the right time is to make the switch to Electric Vehicles? Let us know in the comments below…
