For the past 25 years, Australian manufacturer Nepean Transport Equipment has honed the design and build of bespoke equipment for the road transport industry.
Linfox, Veolia and the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator are among the organisations of varying scale and footprint to have entrusted Nepean for diagnostic solutions to improve the safety and compliance of heavy vehicles.
Ross Transport is the latest.
The Wollongong-based business runs a fleet of over 70 prime movers carrying steel, grain, fertiliser and other products.
In doing this it must often negotiate the surrounding hinterland and towering Mt Ousley. The steep climbs of this imposing working environment are, of course, punishing on trucks and trailers.
Equipment especially brakes, according to Jason Ring, Ross Transport Workshop Foreman, comes under particular scrutiny.
“It chews straight through them,” he says. “We just had a set of test shoes that we got 30,000kms out of on a trailer. It had just gotten the full service, so the oil change. It came back from the half service, which is a grease and general inspection and we wondered if we wrote down the wrong rego.”
They hadn’t. The registration number was right, but the brakes were not.
“There was no chance it could have run on one more trip, they had to come off,” recalls Jason.
“That comes with testing them. But when you’re telling your allocators that we’ve just put four new brake shoes on that trailer there and she should be sweet for a while and then 30,000kms later he’s coming back and you’re telling him he has to hold up because those brakes need to be done before he can go, that slows everything up.”
Three different service schedules are adhered to in the Ross Transport workshop depending on whether the vehicle is on local duties or running interstate.
The mix of new and older gear determines oil changes and brake adjustments, which for older gear is required every 15,000 kilometres.
The introduction of Nepean’s Roller Brake Tester is supporting efficiencies across the business that begin in the Ross Transport workshop.
“Because of how easy that roller brake machine is to use we’re actually putting our vehicles over that brake tester machine every time we do an inspection,” says Jason.
“The way we were doing it before it was getting harder and harder. It’s not so much that the rules keep changing but rather the risk management involved is comprehensive.”
To have confidence that the equipment can meet compliance regulations workshops are now required to double and triple check everything they send out on road.
From Jason’s perspective the new Roller Brake Tester has heralded in new efficiencies to a process that in this day and age is oftentimes more elaborate and time consuming.
“What was taking us previously, using a jack and a bar and two people, three hours to do one unit, being either a truck or trailer, that part of the check would take us about 20 minutes now,” he says.
“It’s incredible how efficient Nepean have made it. You’ve still got to know what you’re doing but it’s made the job so much easier. At the end of the day, we’re using the same machine as the NHVR and what it comes down to is our discretion.”
A reduction to service fault finding time will, ultimately, save money and time, for clients too. It wasn’t long before the new machine was helping to solve a complex problem.
A centre bolt on the drive spring pack had come loose but they had no way of being able to diagnose it. The driver had complained about a vibration in a truck for a little while according to Jason.
“We were sort of stumped on it having checked the driveline and then looked at the wear of the tyres,” he says.
“We’ve sent the tyres away to be balanced up at the local Bridgestone. We checked all the bushes. We did all those checks.”
It was actually the same day the workshop got the machine working, during a trial run while the Nepean technicians were in attendance, that the truck in question was rolled over the machine.
“As soon as we put that first drive axle over and went to go use the shaker, we saw the axle kicking around,” says Jason. “There were no other tell-tale signs. No uneven tyre wear. No shiny bits of metal. Nothing. It just blew us away.”
Previously Jason and the team would have used a bar before releasing the brakes and chocking the wheels and manhandling all the wheels. In short, there would have been no way for them of finding the fault.
The Roller Brake Tester comes with shaker units and a compact scissor jack, providing a multi-faceted solution in one compact unit.
“Having all those features in one unit makes it easier for everyone,” says Jason.
“As far as the jack itself goes, that saves so much time. It’s definitely a good thing.
“The platform is convenient to use. You just roll your axle over it and the platform will actually pick up each axle. It’s simple.”
Even with a loaded trailer the Roller Brake Tester will isolate one axle so that all inspections can be performed in order before rolling off onto the next one.
Ross Transport, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year, refurbished its workshop a few years back in anticipation of perhaps having a machine like this one day.
The design of the workshop tunnel ensures there is ample room in which to use the Roller Brake Tester and that in future the Ross Transport crew will have provision to evaluate roadtrains given staff can move around with relative ease.
To further the point, the powerpack of the unit has been set up remotely via a high platform Ross Transport had built given space around the unit is at a premium.
Nepean Transport Equipment what’s more, as Jason notes, have proven at once helpful and responsive.
“They’re a very supportive business,” he says. “They have actually been reaching out to us to check on how the unit is going. They’ve been in touch four or five times since we’ve had it installed just to make sure everything is running smoothly. You don’t get that customer service usually in the modern business environment.”
When drivers query brakes, as they are prone to do, Jason can now show them categorically.
“It’s not just a matter of them putting the brakes on and trying to take-off,” says Jason.
“We’re actually putting it on a machine than can provide our drivers with documentation that actually provides confirmation that it is safe and road ready. And it helps perform diagnostics better, absolutely.”
