Do some driver’s think that they are going to have to foot the bill for a defect or dragged in the office and told off for breaking the truck so leave it to someone else …
5 unit’s i put off the road last night and i was getting slightly annoyed as 3 of them were for the same problem …and all i wanted to do was get going not fanny arse around with defect’s other lazy arsed driver’s havent repeorted …
Usual one for me is to come in at 4am to find suzies pulled out. Luckily the last one I came to this week was the secondary electrics.
to be honest i havent always defected a lorry if i needed to ive thought il do it tomorrow then when i go in tomorrow its already been allocated to someone else. 
Normally i have the use of a vehicle i have requested to use all the time rather than play the lottery every night so it’s not a problem , but someone on friday had lost the trailer plate, hadn’t reported it and no spare was available 
It depended on who I was working for. When I was on for ParcelForce I used to defect as soon as I found the defect, usually because there was either another unit avaliable or if not then you would still only have to work up to your normal finish time, so defecting a motor didnt really effect your day. For other companies I have not wanted to defect until after my shift and then you end up forgetting, this is because If you defected at the beginning of the shift you would have to wait for the fault to be put right then go out on your run and end up being late, or wait for another unit to come back in and then end up running late so it always effected your working day. There is alot to be said for the like of ParcelForce and other large companies.
The only time we can get things fixed is when the truck/trailer can’t move anymore otherwise its “drive it on” it took me 3 weeks to get a set of drive tyres replaced we had a driver from Poland leave last week coz of the state of our fleet.
this took five weeks to get re-welded two months latter started to crack again.