A TOTAL of 41 trucks were pulled from the road at the Mariannhill Toll Plaza during a two-day brake and tyre watch campaign organised by Fleetwatch Magazine last week.
The campaign began on Wednesday 6 November with a training day at the Traffic Training College in Pietermaritzburg, where approximately 90 traffic officials from the greater Durban area were briefed by various international trucking companies on how to identify specific faults on a truck.
“The campaign is to train the officers to identify all of the faults with the trucks, not just the obvious ones. The officers didn’t have the skills to comprehensively diagnose other major faults on a truck and the state wasn’t training them,” said Steve Reimers, a member of the marketing team at Fleetwatch.
On Thursday 7 November the metro officers were given the opportunity to inspect 41 randomly selected trucks, that were pulled over at the Mariannhill Toll Plaza, at the RTI Pinetown/Westmead Weighbridge Station. The 80 officers were split into groups of ten, with a member from Fleetwatch leading each group. Of the 41 trucks tested, 29 were discontinued.
“A metro police officer directs four trucks at a time to the weighbridge station. The trucks are then inspected by the officers and are then fined, have their licenses removed, completely discontinued and warnings are issued. Should a truck pass the initial tests it is sent to the pits where it’s weighed and has its brakes tested. There are some circumstances when a truck is asked to proceed to its nearest depot for maintenance and is forced to drive under a restricted speed of 30 kilometres per hour, sometimes with an escort. At other times the trucking companies have to send out a maintenance team to fix the problems on a truck before it is allowed to leave the holding are,” explained Reimers.
The road safety campaign started in 2006 and, according to Reimers, 70 per cent of the trucks they test each year fail outright.
Three of the four trucks which were pulled over when the Highway Mail went to investigate failed the initial tests.
A truck from KDK Logistics was pulled over and was found to be unlicensed, had an unlicensed trailer, the tyres were in disrepair and it had defective brakes. A tanker, being pulled by Lucerne Transport, failed initial tests as its ABS brakes were faulty. According to the inspector of the vehicle, Kein Guild, the second tanker would have jack-knifed if brakes were sharply applied. Comment was not received from these companies before going to print.
A Grangold Logistics truck was pulled over and, according to the inspectors, no maintenance had been performed on the vehicle, the slack adjusters were broken and the brake shoes did not meet the drum. The driver of the vehicle, who did not wish to be named, said he had driven from Johannesburg in low gear and made use of exhaust brakes.
“We are law abiding citizens and will comply with all instances of the law. Sometimes these things happen when a truck leaves the yard to make a delivery. All that was needed was the brakes to be adjusted,” said Mohamed Essa, manager at Grangold Logistics.
Reimers said, “You don’t really appreciate the enormity of a truck and the weight that it carries until you are physically standing next to one. It is scary to think that there are trucks carrying up to 54 tons that don’t have working brake systems.”
