Van Overloading - a Solution.

According to recent figures, the number of vans on the road now tops 3 million. And registrations in March were up 24% on the same month last year.

That’s an awful lot of people moving away from bigger vehicles and trying to do the same job with something smaller.

There a lot of advantages of course. No tachograph, no special training needed to drive one and they can frequently go where a bigger vehicle might not be able to.

But the rise in the use of light vehicles is causing some concern especially when nearly two-thirds of vans stopped by DVSA have a serious defect. In addition almost half of vans fail their MOT first time.

It’s one of the dangers of trying to use a smaller vehicle for a job that was traditionally done by a larger one. Of trying to cram a quart into a pint pot.

With the growth of vans on the road comes a rise in the calls to regulate them in the same way that HGV’s are. Unsurprisingly the operators don’t think the idea of an ‘O’ licence for vans is a good idea but, as so often happens, legislation maybe forced on the industry if they don’t regulate themselves.

The startling statistic that a whopping 93% of vans that were stopped were overloaded might bring that day forward.

Axle Weights Checked on this van and NOT overloaded!

So what can be done?

We’ve written before about van overloading as that at least is something we can help with.

An Axtec OnBoard Load Indicator is inexpensive to buy, but more importantly the customer calibration facility means routine maintenance costs are eliminated.

It can be connected to a tracking device so that those with larger fleets can be alerted to an overload, in real time in some cases.

Fitted on site by one of our directly employed technicians in less than half a day, disruption to the working day is kept to a minimum.

With many vans being used as little more than mobile tool boxes with staff that have no professional driving qualification, it’s little wonder that so many of them fall foul of the enforcement authorities.

But there are solutions out there and many professional van operators are already our customers. 

Hopefully more will want to show how professional they are and how serious they take the problem of overloading and stave off the threatened legislation.