And the cost of having your van stopped is...

Estimated at £4,000.00 per day.

That's the figure estimated by DVSA as published in their Guidance notes. You can access these notes by clicking this link. 

The DVSA stops more than 15,000 vans a year. And of those stopped, almost 84% of them were found to be overloaded. In fact, overloading was the single biggest fault found with vans by some considerable margin.

Unlike Large Goods Vehicles, that is anything over 3,500kg gross weight, vans can be operated by anyone. No special licence or training is required and yet there are estimated to be around 3.6 million of them on our roads.

Many of them are obviously making deliveries, supermarket home delivery vans and parcel delivery vans but often they are seen as a mobile toolbox.

Axtec OnBoard - prevents van overloads

In those cases the driver of the van is employed as something else – a service engineer or installation engineer – and little thought is given to the van they drive with the emphasis being on how many physical tools or equipment they can get in the back rather than the weight of it.

The design weight of the van though must not be exceeded. The design gross weight includes the van, the driver and any passengers, fuel, the load and anything else that happens to be in the van.

And these days, most drivers and passengers will be kitted out with safety boots, hard hats, hi-viz jackets etc all of which add weight to the vehicle.

The cost of having a van stopped is far in excess of any fine that may be applied. Finding another van and driver and then sending them possibly miles to the prohibited vehicle is very costly.

Or how about the time and effort that might need to go into preparing a case and attending court?

And with your van prohibited you’re not getting to the job. That delivery isn’t being made. The vital piece of equipment isn’t being serviced. Your customer is being let down.

The bad will that a late delivery or missed service call generates could cost your company considerably.

Overloading a van is something that is costly and needs to be avoided so Axtec offer a range of systems to prevent it with prices starting under £1,000.00

So which could you afford more?

I would guess it’s certainly not the £4,000.00 the DVSA estimate it could be costing you.