Truck and heavy vehicle fleet managers face a delicate balancing act in their roles. You’re managing the safety of your people and fleet, while simultaneously maintaining compliance with all safety codes and ensuring your fleet operates at peak efficiency.
Regular, reliable vehicle brake testing plays a critical role in achieving all these goals. It helps keep your vehicles running their best, while ensuring your people get home safe every day.
At Rentco, we offer a comprehensive brake testing service for your entire fleet needs. We’ll help you keep your vehicles safer and more efficient on the road, taking the burden off your plate and alleviating all the stress that comes with it.
Here’s why thorough professional brake testing is crucial to your logistics fleet management.
The importance of regular brake testing
Brake testing plays a critical role in maintaining the safety and efficiency of your trucks and other fleet vehicles.
Over time, brakes wear down, reducing their performance and requiring longer stopping distances. It doesn’t just limit their efficiency, it creates a more hazardous environment for your drivers—and anyone else on the road.
Properly maintained brakes deliver better vehicle control, shorter stopping distances, and improved handling, enhancing the overall safety of drivers, passengers, and other road users. It gives you peace of mind that they provide the necessary stopping power for your vehicles, particularly for those larger, heavier additions to your fleet.
By conducting regular brake tests, fleet managers can identify any issues or deficiencies in their vehicles’ braking systems, before they turn into serious problems. It allows you to prevent avoidable accidents entirely, while also ensuring that your entire business remains compliant with industry standards and regulations.
What happens if you neglect brake maintenance
Ultimately, we all instinctively know what happens if you don’t maintain the brakes on your vehicles.
After all, they’re the critical safety component of every vehicle; neglecting brake maintenance can create unnecessarily dangerous situations, and have severe, or even catastrophic, consequences.
Worn brake pads and rotors compromise braking efficiency, meaning longer stopping distances and reduced vehicle control. Over time, neglecting brake maintenance can cause extensive damage to the braking system, leading to costly repairs and vehicle downtime.
And it’s not just worn parts that create problems. Brake fluid leaks, or contaminated fluid, can lead to brake failure entirely, leaving your drivers with little to no braking power at all. And when you’ve got a large, heavy vehicle out on the road, like a double road train, this turns it into a giant metal box with the stopping capabilities of a meteor.
From a management point of view, your business can face legal and regulatory repercussions if your fleet is found to be in violation of your brake maintenance requirements—which can cost you big in fines and reputational damage.
Regular brake testing is a fundamental aspect of your fleet management
Regular brake testing ensures you’re able to detect early signs of wear and tear, deterioration, or malfunction in your fleet’s braking components. This proactive approach allows you to address issues before they turn into dangers, and ensure optimal braking performance for your fleet, in any condition they may face out on the road.
It also provides peace of mind. Not only for your drivers and teams, but for management, and your partners, clients, and customers.
But without a regular testing schedule—or a reliable brake testing partner—it can quickly become a problem far greater than it needs to be.
Improve the safety of your fleet with Rentco’s brake testing services
As well as being a full-service fleet and equipment hire company, Rentco provides complete brake testing services at our Super Depot in High Wycombe, WA.
Our state-of-the-art Levanta Roller Brake Tester delivers comprehensive, accurate brake testing. Simply drive your vehicles onto the weigh plate, and our teams do the rest.
Featuring clever technology that offers load simulation for unladen vehicles with a light tare weight, we help you eliminate unsafe guesswork and time-consuming load trials. It’s even capable of testing the brakes on a double road train, without your driver even having to leave the cab.
You get a detailed report of the test for your accreditation records, which is compliant with NHVR, AS/NZ 4613:1999 and relevant legislation in all states, including MRB 10244.
Partnering with Rentco for your fleet brake testing takes the stress of it all off your shoulders. You can utilise our testing facility to replace all previous brake testing technologies, and take advantage of large-scale capabilities that most in-house workshops just don’t have. It helps you proactively reduce maintenance and downtime for all your vehicles, while freeing your fleet managers up to focus on other important work.
Access comprehensive brake testing from Australia’s trusted name in truck rentals
When you partner with Rentco, whether it’s for a full fleet of truck rentals or comprehensive brake testing, you get peace of mind that you’re partnering with the experts.
Our range of 3,500 vehicles and counting, go through regular brake testing to ensure their safety on the road. Our 19-bay workshop facility has the capacity to deliver comprehensive testing and servicing, so you know that every vehicle you hire is operating as efficiently as possible, reducing the chance of unexpected downtime.
At Rentco, we take pride in the safety of our fleet, and yours. Contact your nearest depot to browse our equipment range, and discuss a tailored transport equipment rental and truck hire solution for your next project.
