New vehicles

[Mr. P]

For those having had oportunity to do pre delivery inspection on a new appliance prior to their brigade receiving it, have you been impressed or found lots of bits wrong? Some recent cases that have come to my attention would indicate a very poor qc on the suppliers side. Spending around £200K per vehicle, would you be correct in assumiong the thing should be very shiney with all the bits in the right place, or, would you let go and ignore many things just to get it on the road to replace a decrepid old thing presently on the run?

[Rich]

I am not a transport/workshop manager but an end user of the red lorries and have been on a PDI with our transport manager.  Any problems should be pointed out and also any little improvements ie - a different BA release lever or changing of a siren hand switch to a foot switch should be asked for.  Oh if you do this make sure the manufacturer changes their spec or any future appliances won't have the updated features on them - yes they do forget unless you tell them.

The crews deserve a good quality machine not something that will niggle at them and ultimately bring watch morale down.  A few extra weeks will be worth the wait.

[Guest]

Blimey - If worrying about the position of a foot pedal or the type of BA release lever constitutes a problem, then you should think yourselves fortunate.

London's latest batch of Merc Pumps have been delivered with major problems such as a defect with the telma braking system which affects the stability of the vehicle when cornering in the wet. (The brakes are applied too vigourously when the driver lifts his/her foot from the throttle, which tends to sent the pump sliding on wet bends. LFB are to fix this problem by disconnecting the system, thereby reducing the quality of the brakes!!!)

Other defects are too many to mention but include: The total shutdown of all electrical power - thereby loosing brakes and steering, and the almost total inability to produce foam from the onboard system.

[Mr. P]

This is the sort of thing I meant. How do get the supplier to take responsibility? And, how do you get your brigade to stand up to them to get things put right at no further cost?

[Guest]

We had a pair of Atego's, it felt like driving with the rear tyres flat!
Excuse was that the cab was 'air suspended! Lovely truck for cruising down the motorways, but in the city on the hurry up is not recommended.
What did our Transport officer do? Gave them to a retained station doing 150 calls max a year!

[Rich]

Mr P.

Some of the changes were done as a good will gesture (a happy customer comes back next year!!) but the more expensive changes have to be paid for, as a brigade that has Firefighters on a vehicle service advisory group (SAG) the end user gets input before the order goes in, not the Transport Manager picking his favourite spec out of a brochure.  This has proved to work extremely well in the past.  By doing this all the little extras are already included in the spec.