I’ve seen I few trucks with chrome mirror covers/guards, are these just for looks or do they have a function when hit ? It’s just I havnt been driving long about 6 month and had mirrors smashed by colliding with other trucks first time was 50/50 but second time I pulled over slowed down and braced for impact and driver didn’t stop, now mirrors don’t cost me nothing they just send a fitter out with a new set but it’s a pain, so anyone with any experience of these mirror protectors? Are they worth a purchase?
Thanks
Well where my Dad works most of the fleet have them and that’s 100+ and now I see AW Jenkinson starting to put black ones over their mirrors so I guess they have some impact taken to them.
They’re shaped so that an impact SHOULD fold them in rather than breaking them, but you can still end up with broken mirrors and the glass can still break due to the impact.
Worth it for a company to buy? YES 100%.
Worth it as a driver? NO, stop hitting things 
From the perspective of someone who has had them and not had them, if your driving down an narrow 2 way road and someone is coming the other way I would try not to hit mirrors, with or without them.
Instead of breaking the mirror they break the window. Slow down, move over and be careful.
The truck I drive now had stainless steel guards fitted. but only until my third window on the passenger side caved in, then off they came. The Stralis has shaped backs to the mirrors and they tend to deflect branches of trees and bushes. The fitted guards are curved but with quite sharp edges that can cause a branch to hang on or dig in on the inside edge of the guard, resulting in the mirror folding back into the glazing.
Since most of our work is up tight lanes and small rural roads, it is sometimes a neccessity to get over as far to the left as possible to avoid ‘Mrs School Run’ and her Land Rover Discovery when she is hurtling towards you while on the phone with three kids in the back. As the local County council no longer seem to trim the hedgerows as they used to do it results in more flora and fauna hanging out in the roads, so no matter how good a driver you are , you aint going to miss them!
The answer for me was to remove the offending items, not had a window broken for ages now!
Twoninety88:
The truck I drive now had stainless steel guards fitted. but only until my third window on the passenger side caved in, then off they came. The Stralis has shaped backs to the mirrors and they tend to deflect branches of trees and bushes. The fitted guards are curved but with quite sharp edges that can cause a branch to hang on or dig in on the inside edge of the guard, resulting in the mirror folding back into the glazing.Since most of our work is up tight lanes and small rural roads, it is sometimes a neccessity to get over as far to the left as possible to avoid ‘Mrs School Run’ and her Land Rover Discovery when she is hurtling towards you while on the phone with three kids in the back. As the local County council no longer seem to trim the hedgerows as they used to do it results in more flora and fauna hanging out in the roads, so no matter how good a driver you are , you aint going to miss them!
The answer for me was to remove the offending items, not had a window broken for ages now!
I too used to have a stralis on builders merchant work and yes the mirrors stick out and catch on everything, very badly designed.
sketchybob:
I’ve seen I few trucks with chrome mirror covers/guards, are these just for looks or do they have a function when hit ? It’s just I havnt been driving long about 6 month and had mirrors smashed by colliding with other trucks first time was 50/50 but second time I pulled over slowed down and braced for impact and driver didn’t stop, now mirrors don’t cost me nothing they just send a fitter out with a new set but it’s a pain, so anyone with any experience of these mirror protectors? Are they worth a purchase?
Thanks
Wear glasses instead it works out cheaper.
Thanks for the replys , I was sure somone would come up with wear glasses or stop hitting things but that won’t stop people hitting me when pulled over to the curb and slowed down to walking pace as said in my first post don’t think wearing glasses would help me much in this case, maby you should wear yours when reading forums might work out you come up with a whittier and even more funny post and look cool
Due to the area that we operated from (narrow Derbyshire lanes overgrown with self setting trees) our trucks had the mirror arms either shortened or moved against the cab, even then we made guards from old marker boards to help prevent mirror breakages as the glasses were around £7 each. Only other option would have been to slow down of course! 
Pete.
They are quite pricey to buy as well IIRC
What we’ve found with the tippers, if you don’t have the mirror guard then just one bit pops off (The CF Mirrors are in 4 seperate pieces, front and back), where as with these on, the whole lot breaks costing a lot more.
In 7 years we’ve lost a couple of backing plates and thats it.
sketchybob:
Thanks for the replys , I was sure somone would come up with wear glasses or stop hitting things but that won’t stop people hitting me when pulled over to the curb and slowed down to walking pace as said in my first post don’t think wearing glasses would help me much in this case, maby you should wear yours when reading forums might work out you come up with a whittier and even more funny post and look cool
I doubt they’ve done much driving down the real country lanes trucks rarely go down other than the occasional drop. You aren’t talking chunky branches it’s often just foliage that can crack plastic or mirror glass on some makes of truck really very easily you’d waste loads of time slowing to let oncoming traffic pass just so you can pull out around a bit of sticking out twig.
dew:
What we’ve found with the tippers, if you don’t have the mirror guard then just one bit pops off (The CF Mirrors are in 4 seperate pieces, front and back), where as with these on, the whole lot breaks costing a lot more.In 7 years we’ve lost a couple of backing plates and thats it.
Yep, this is exactly what we do, on any make we can, we put the cheaper non-genuine mirrors on from Unitruck? that look the same but the plastic back covers are just a couple of quid and we put quite a few on but that’s it. Hefty metal guard cause more damage than they prevent.
Regarding a different comment above, I don’t find the Stralis too bad it was better when it was individual mirrors on a metal arm, I would have thought it might be possible to retrofit them. Iveco 7.5 tonners are terrible though with stupidly unecessary sticking out mirrors.
Ive got a tip for dafs! Take off the back covers unscrew the mount clamp ever so slightly then if you have a high speed impact the mirror folds softly and the only thing that breaks is the rear cover.
In the last 6-7 years ive only broke 3 nearside blindspot back covers and they only cost a few quid compared to mirror guards. Just had a look at ebay and the stainless steel range from 165quid to 415quid 
Who the ■■■■ pays 415 quid for mirror guards?!
merc0447:
Ive got a tip for dafs! Take off the back covers unscrew the mount clamp ever so slightly then if you have a high speed impact the mirror folds softly and the only thing that breaks is the rear cover.In the last 6-7 years ive only broke 3 nearside blindspot back covers and they only cost a few quid compared to mirror guards. Just had a look at ebay and the stainless steel range from 165quid to 415quid
Who the [zb] pays 415 quid for mirror guards?!
That’s it, we’ve lost 2 lower mirror backs, 1 upper in those years and that’s it! Total cost has been next to nothing.
merc0447:
Who the [zb] pays 415 quid for mirror guards?!
Probably the firm I work for at the moment, but mine reside in a corner of the warehouse and thats where they are staying!
A bit of a bad design on the Stralis side I might offer, when you fold back the mirrors, the edge of the plastic actually touches the already thin glazing the manufacturers use. Add another inch or so of Stainless steel and it is a recipe for broken side windows.
It’s unfortunate the (or fortunate from a manufacturer’s parts revenue point of view) that the newer mirrors are no longer on a metal arm so can’t be loosened. It’s handy to have them loose enough you can move the whole head in case the electric adjustment packs up also.
Big mirror guards can have a fair impact on fuel economy as well.
Own Account Driver:
…you’d waste loads of time slowing to let oncoming traffic pass just so you can pull out around a bit of sticking out twig.
Eh? 
Seriously??
You think it wastes less time to keep smacking your mirrors off everything? 
Stopping to fold the mirror arm back into place. Collecting and replacing broken mirror backs. Dealing with other drivers when you clash mirrors. Etc… Hardly efficient use of time is it, never mind good driving…
Olly650:
Own Account Driver:
…you’d waste loads of time slowing to let oncoming traffic pass just so you can pull out around a bit of sticking out twig.Eh?
You think it wastes less time to keep smacking your mirrors off everything?
Stopping to fold the mirror arm back into place. Collecting and replacing broken mirror backs. Dealing with other drivers when you clash mirrors. Etc… Hardly efficient use of time is it, never mind good driving…
I’Ii typically quite happily drive with the n/s mirror brushing the hedge and my main driver has the original mirror head after 8 years, probably probably replaced the plastic back cover about half a dozen times at £2 a pop. I wouldn’t stop to fold a mirror back out I push it back out with a pole, there was a thread recently and plenty of other people do this.
I think you might be confusing twig with branch though maybe. Haven’t had one for a while but I would always treat mirror strikes as knock for knock in most cases.