Drive Safely This Brake Safety Week And How To Cover The Blitz Better Next Year

When you’re planning for the year August 22 -  28 looks like any other week. Even if you did mark it on your calendar at the beginning of the year, most carriers can barely look up from their desk today, let alone toward next week, next month or next quarter. Brake Safety Week, as a result, sneaks up on carriers each year.

Last year that meant 12% or 5,156 commercial motor vehicles of the 43,565 inspected were placed out of service for brake-related violations and removed from roadways due to brake violations. According to CVSA, inspectors will be checking the the brake system and its components; an inspector will:

• Check for missing, non-functioning, loose, contaminated or cracked parts on the brake system.
• Check for S-cam flip-over.
• Listen for audible air leaks around brake components and lines.
• Check for improper connections and chafing of air hoses and tubing.
• Ensure slack adjusters are the same length (from center of S-cam to center of clevis pin) and the air chambers on each axle are the same size.
• Ensure the air system maintains proper air pressure.
• Look for non-manufactured holes (e.g., rust holes, holes created by rubbing or friction, etc.) and broken springs in the spring brake housing.
• Mark and measure pushrod travel.
• Inspect required brake system warning devices, such as anti-lock braking system malfunction lamp(s) and low air-pressure warning devices.
• Inspect the tractor protection system, including the bleed-back system on the trailer.
• Ensure the breakaway system is operable on the trailer.

We believe that you should have everything you need to scale your fleet in one place. When you separate your drivers on the road from your back-office, you run the risk of getting sacked this week next year for a safety violation.

Kamion offers alerts for all of your driver, truck and trailer needs–so that you never forget to update documents for drivers and trucks before an audit and miss a maintenance upgrade–in the same place you communicate and dispatch with your drivers.