Question for those who have an older unit or trailers on your O licence as a spare or occasional motor doing low annual mileage. What sort of interval on inspections are you going with?
I had two lucrative days lined up today - tip Crewe, reload Trafford Park, tip Stamford, repeat - instead I’m sat in the office fuming due to another CanBus wiring niggle on my Volvo. Doing some sums to see if I could stomach the overheads of having a ‘spare’ old motor but ready to step in if needed.
Hi
Our two older transporters (11 and 12 Years) are on 6 weeklies due to their age rather than the distances they travel. There is a calculator on the DVSA guide to Maintenance:
gov.uk/government/publicati … worthiness
Hope this helps?
I’ve worked for a lot of race teams who run old trucks, but very low mileage, maybe less than 10,000pa if on a UK race series; the PMI’s are normally 12 weekly intervals.
However the other thing I’ve learned is that trucks don’t do well standing around not being used. It seems common to hear of people whose race trucks breakdown on the first trip of the year after being stood doing very little for most of the winter.
Also for the cost of buying and maintaining a 2nd truck just in case of breakdowns, wouldn’t it be cheaper to spot hire to cover those events?
What I’ve done on a couple of race teams if they run more than 1 truck, is keep one unit all year to cover occasional transport through the winter and then hire in the extra trucks for the race season or for occasional weeks as needed.
We are probably a bit out of the ordinary in that we run an urban artic and keep a spare tractor but the reason is the same as the op, fear of electronic problems on the “newer” vehicle, although we are sorting a cloned copy of the ECU now. We are in the events business so just cannot afford the time mucking about hiring a suitable replacement tractor. We keep the spare MOT’d and then can add it to the licence and tax it online immediately we need it, which we have, including recovering the “new” one on a trailer from the south of england 
We do our own inspections on site though and have access to a roller brake tester 150m away 
The default period for anything older than 12 years is stated as 6 weeks in the guide, ours do very, very low mileage.
I agree with the comments about a standing truck deteriorating though, we try and use ours for a bit of shunting if we can, although the yard is not very big to shunt in anyway
The guidelines are as said 6 weeks between inspections. If the vehicle sits doing nothing for long periods you could operate an alternative sytem, but you have to be very careful how you do it. I had an operator who worked this way with one trailer in his fleet which was only required for two months of the year. You need to operate a system which ensures that the vehicle cannot go on the road. Once the six weeks have been reached the vehicle must be clearly marked as not to be used on the road. As a precaution the keys should be locked away so that drivers do not have access to them. In the case of a vehicle you have a choice whether to surrender tax and restrict the inurance cover. There needs to be some system to ensure that office personnel cannot in ignorance let the vehicle go out. If you have a maintenance wall chart it can be recorded as VOR etc.
If work dictates that the vehicle is needed then it cannot go out until it has had the missing PMI and defects asssessed and if necessary rectified. If using a contractor for PMIs then it would be best to make sure they know the vehicle has stood for a long time since certain items need to be checked more thoroughly. You are probabaly going to have to make sure that you have a loaded roller brake test print out for this PMI rather than it being one of the normal six weeklies that possibly doesn’t. Obviously insurance and tax need to be sorted out as well. With that PMI done if insurance and tax are valid then you are clear to use it for another six weeks.
Having gone to all that trouble it is probably just as easy and convenient to do the six week PMI anyway.
I have found that moving from 12 to 6 weeks once the vehicle reaches the age limit is actually a benefit since eg manually checking that calipers slide freely at six weeks prevents having to free them off at 12 weeks.
Thanks for all the replies, some good food for thought. It will almost certainly be over 12 years old so as I suspected 6 weeks would be required. The garage I use are top, so not too worried, and like the poster above they have a brake tester within 100 yards of our place.
I have encountered the problem of trucks standing around before and it’s not good! I could probably work another wagon virtually full time November/December but it would be very ‘seasonal’ apart from that.
muckles:
I’ve worked for a lot of race teams who run old trucks, but very low mileage, maybe less than 10,000pa if on a UK race series; the PMI’s are normally 12 weekly intervals.However the other thing I’ve learned is that trucks don’t do well standing around not being used. It seems common to hear of people whose race trucks breakdown on the first trip of the year after being stood doing very little for most of the winter.
Also for the cost of buying and maintaining a 2nd truck just in case of breakdowns, wouldn’t it be cheaper to spot hire to cover those events?
What I’ve done on a couple of race teams if they run more than 1 truck, is keep one unit all year to cover occasional transport through the winter and then hire in the extra trucks for the race season or for occasional weeks as needed.
Beechdean AMR use Dawsons units now and Prodrive’s newer vehicles are all Asset Alliance. I think Prodrive only have the two first shape Premiums left as owned units now.