2014 TMC: inspectors descend

Road transport authorities from three states recently came together to share their views and expertise at the 2014 PACCAR & Dealer TMC

Fleet operators and road transit authorities came together at the recent 2014 PACCAR & Dealer Technical & Maintenance Conference in Melbourne for an open forum under the banner of 'What the inspectors see – feedback from the coalface'.

While fleet operators and transport safety officers often have an uneasy relationship, the discussion played out with an atmosphere of co-operation, while the meeting was also notable for its mix of speakers. No fewer than seven representatives from road transit authorities were present, from Queensland's TMR, New South Wales' RMS and Victoria's VicRoads, while Lance Fisher from J L Pierce Pty Ltd and Jeff Chandler from Booth Transport sat on the panel to represent road freight operators.

Chairing the meeting was ATA Chief Executive Stuart St Clair, who underlined the importance of the occasion.

"This is not about a 'them and us'; it's really about how we can produce a safer industry," he said.

"This is a golden opportunity to find out what's really happening on the road from the inspector's point of view."

In the session that followed, the road transit authorities presented a series of slides showing what inspectors are seeing on the roadside and the general prevalence of heavy vehicle defect rates.

According to John Wroblewski, Executive Director (Transport Access and Use) at Queensland's TMR, inspections show the vast majority of operators are trying to do the right thing, with the defect rate remaining fairly steady over the past five years at 2.5 per cent.

"That's a really good result from my perspective," he said.

"Generally we see a very low rate of dangerous defects; 97.5 per cent are doing the right thing but it's that 2.5 per cent we've got to find – that's where we need to use enforcement, that's where we need to use heavier tactics. We need to be able to target that 2.5 per cent because they're the ones who are causing the problems."

Brett Patterson, who is in charge of NSW's transport inspectors, says the 280 inspectors employed by RMS screen around 3.2 million vehicles each year and conduct around 560,000 individual vehicle inspections.

"We're seeing a lot more truck fires in NSW, whether it's from engine oil leaks or different failures," he said.

"Engines can run a lot hotter these days with the Euro standards and whenever there's a large engine oil leak and the oil gets onto the brake components through to the exhaust, there's the potential for a fire."

The inspectors said there were three key areas on which they focused the bulk of their efforts: brakes, steering and suspension. While heavy vehicle safety has improved markedly in the last few decades, with improvements in vehicle design playing a major role, the slides presented at the discussion showed plenty of faults that should have been picked up back at base, either in the workshop or in a pre-trip inspection.

The slides encompassed worn brake drums, cracked brake rotors, frayed seat belts – even a loose seat chocked with a lump of timber…

In addressing vehicle roadworthiness, Lance Fisher highlighted the key role of the driver.

"The most important front-line guy of your fleet and your business is your driver … you have to have a very robust pre-trip inspection," he said.

"The first part of the process to fix the problems is the driver – he becomes the first pivotal point. The second part of the puzzle is how does that information get back into your system and how do you train your drivers to know what's roadworthy, and what's unroadworthy? That's the training side of it."

Mr Fisher also stressed the importance of a forceful workshop regime, giving the workshop the ability to ground a vehicle if necessary, and the benefits of preventative maintenance.

"Preventative maintenance is the cheapest form of maintenance you'll ever do – fix it before it goes out and becomes a problem on the side of the road," he said.

Mr Wroblewski echoed Mr Fisher's sentiments regarding safety.

"A big part for me is education and training: if we always do what we've always done we'll always get what we've always got," he said.

"I accept that sometimes people make mistakes – hopefully they're not serious mistakes – but we have to be educating people about those mistakes.

"I've got this bugbear: people shouldn't have to go to work in the morning and then die during the day as they do their job."

The inspectors' presentations were followed by a question-and-answer session, with operators highlighting issues as diverse of the responsibilities of third-party workshops and OEM contract maintenance programs to the inconsistencies of inspection regimes.

Mr Wroblewski agreed that consistency was a big issue.

"If we don't work towards a national approach we're never going to get that degree of consistency," he said.

"It's about people. Getting consistency is about the way you treat people, the way you teach people, the way you monitor people, the way you train people, but achieving it is really really hard."

That focus on consistency will be at the core of the NTC and NHVR review of heavy vehicle roadworthiness in this country. Click here to read the article detailing the update the two federal bodies recently gave at the 2014 PACCAR & Dealer TMC.

2014 TMC: inspectors descend

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