Dublin Truck Rental Company Vanrentals.ie launches new compliance program for customers.

The Truck rental sector in Ireland is an area fraught with differing levels of legislation governing the usage, specification and capabilities of commercial vehicles. These standards are set by different authorities and for the end user can be quite difficult to decipher and adhere to.

Vanrentals.ie a Dublin based truck rental provider have been working over the last couple of months in implementing a companywide review of both vehicles and customers in an effort to ensure compliance across the board and set new industry wide standards in vehicle provision and monitoring.

Noel Crowther, Operations manager at Vanrentals.ie. “There is a huge lack of thorough understanding of the law among vehicle operators and also with some truck hire companies”.

Prime areas of concern are overloading of vehicles or vehicles whose specification is not suitable for the purpose which they are provided for.

Taking the above into account Vanrentals.ie has done a complete fleet overhaul. All new rental trucks are now supplied with lightweight carbofont bodies with aluminium sub frames, tail lifts are now manufactured from aluminium and vehicle chassis are weighed. By taking the time to custom build their units, Vanrentals.ie now can give exact legal payload information to customers. According to Noel “there is a lot of disinformation out there regarding payload and licence requirements”.

The standard Irish car licence does allow people to drive a rental truck; however there are a number of restrictions. This is clearly visible on the licence itself where it states a maximum gross vehicle weight of 3,500 Kilos. The gross vehicle weight of a truck is the truck, body and payload combined. A light truck chassis will weigh a minimum of 1800 kilos; a lightweight is around 700 kilos, which yields around a 1 tonne legal payload. It is typical for some Irish users to carry 2 to 3 tonnes of payload without realising that the vehicle is being operated outside of body vehicle and licence requirements.

This has led to a new interaction programme with truck hire customers. Our representative will now do an assessment of the customer’s requirement in terms of payload and licence type and specify a vehicle exactly to those requirements. This has the added benefit of not only insuring the customer is getting a vehicle that reflects their needs directly but also that they will be operating the rental truck in accordance with the law.

This new interaction programme is designed with the customer in mind, ensuring that both short term hire and long term contract truck rental customers operate safely and efficiently.