sample internal document · 4 sections indexed
Vehicle register (sample)
Sample document. Every figure below is invented.
Tree Truck publishes none of this, and a council should not. It was written for this demo to stand in for the register of trucks, chippers and trailers a yard holds, with the statutory dates against each. In most businesses it is a whiteboard at the depot or a spreadsheet on one person's machine, which is exactly why a lapse is only noticed after it has happened, so the seats have something real-shaped to read. Nothing here is a claim about Tree Truck.
Readable from: Manager, Accounts, Foreman, Driver. Every other seat is refused this document by name.
Section 1
What the register holds against every vehicle
The register carries one row per vehicle and holds: the vehicle name the crew actually uses, the class, whether the vehicle runs on a warrant of fitness or a certificate of fitness, the expiry date of that warrant or certificate, the road user charges reading and the distance remaining on it, the date of the last recorded walk-around inspection, who signed it, any defect recorded and open against the vehicle, and whether the vehicle is off-road. Class decides which statutory check applies: a heavy vehicle and any vehicle used commercially in the heavy classes runs on a certificate of fitness, most light vehicles run on a warrant of fitness, and a trailer runs on its own certificate. Getting that wrong is not a paperwork error, it is an unlicensed vehicle on the road. Every date and every reading below is invented for this sample.
Section 2
Sample rows: what a vehicle looks like in the register
Sample rows, all invented. Pickles, light truck, warrant of fitness expiring in fourteen days, last walk-around inspection three days ago, no open defect, on the road. Tubby, chipper truck, certificate of fitness expiring in four months, last inspection yesterday, one open defect recorded against the wiper blades and marked as action required before the next wet-weather job. Barney, heavy truck, certificate of fitness current, last recorded inspection eleven days ago, road user charges showing under 500 kilometres remaining. Two trailers are held on their own certificates and are inspected with the towing vehicle rather than separately. Nothing in this sample is a statement about any real vehicle: the three names are ones the business uses in public, and every date, reading, defect and status set against them here is written for the demo.
Section 3
The walk-around a driver does before the vehicle leaves the yard
A driver completes the walk-around before the vehicle leaves the yard, not on arrival at the job. The check covers: tyres and visible tread, wheel nuts and any indicator marks, lights and indicators front and rear, wipers and washers, mirrors and glass, horn, service and park brake feel, fluid levels, load restraint and the chipper hitch or towing connection, the fire extinguisher and first aid kit, and any fluid on the ground under where the vehicle stood overnight. Anything found is recorded as a defect against the vehicle with a note of whether it stops the vehicle or not. A defect that stops the vehicle is called in before the crew leaves. The register treats a vehicle that moved with no completed check as a reportable event in its own right, because the absence is the thing nobody notices at the time.
Section 4
Warrant and certificate expiry: how far ahead the register warns, and what happens at lapse
The register warns at thirty days and again at seven days before a warrant of fitness or certificate of fitness expires, and it books against the earlier of the two dates where a vehicle carries both a statutory expiry and a scheduled service. A vehicle whose warrant or certificate has lapsed is marked off-road in the register and is not dispatched, whatever is on the run sheet, because a lapsed vehicle is uninsured in practice as well as unlawful. Where a lapse is found on the morning of a job, the work moves to another vehicle and the job is re-sequenced rather than the vehicle being used once more. Road user charges are treated the same way: under 1,000 kilometres remaining is a warning, and a vehicle is not sent out on a long run against a reading that will run out mid-job.