This morning I was driving one of the company vehicles and it just felt like something was wrong. Most of us that drive just tend to know through feel and I decided to "quickly" go and have it checked out. Quickly was the wrong word because it took over 3 hours as they had to wait for the specific parts to arrive as these were not in stock. I just had to wait in the coffee shop upstairs because if I take the vehicle back unrepaired it will be booked out and will be days before I can get it repaired. The vehicles do not stop and are on the go continuously so
it is even more important to maintain them so they are not out of action.
It turned out the car required 4 new shock absorbers and 4 new shock stabilizers which were missing. The shock absorbers should have bee replaced months ago because they create uneven wear on the tyres which I had to buy two more.
This is why it is important for someone like myself to test drive the vehicles on a regular basis. For some reason your employed drivers just keep quiet or are ignorant of the fact that anything is even wrong. They will only tell you when it is broken and then it costs even more to repair. If I had no drive the car today we would have required 4 new tyres next month and God knows what else would have been wrong.
Drivers I have found are the biggest turn over of staff and when you find decent ones you try and hang onto them. Just because someone has a license it does not mean they are capable of driving because in Africa most licenses are bought through corruption.
I have lost count how many times I have had to reverse the container trucks into our delivery bay because the truck driver is incapable and my patience wears thin after an hour of filed attempts. It has got so bad I have now drawn lines for them to follow and the worst part is these truck drivers are driving on our roads.
I would love for self driving vehicles to be a thing within the next few years mainly because I could get rid of my drivers and save the vehicles from being punished the way they are driven. I think every vehicle we have now has a cracked wind screen and I have been driving for over 30 years and experienced this only once. I know as I have in the past replaced a windscreen only for it to be cracked again the following week. They drive too close to the other vehicles in front and no driver will ever tell you there is a chip which can be repaired before a crack appears.
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