Standards
What is checked, and what happens when it fails
Part of what runs under our name is ours and part is contracted from operators we have worked with for years. The papers, the checks and the replacement rule are the same for both, and this is the whole of them rather than a summary.
- Papers before a vehicle goes on the roster
- 4
- Checks before a driver gets a duty
- 3
Before a vehicle goes on the roster
Four documents, checked against the originals rather than against a photograph of them on somebody’s phone. Any one of them lapsed and the vehicle comes off the roster until it is put right, whoever owns it.
- Registration certificate
- Checked against the original, and against the operator who is presenting it. A vehicle whose registered owner is not the person we are contracting with does not go on the roster.
- All India tourist permit
- The permit that lets a commercial vehicle cross a state line. It is what makes an outstation trip legal rather than a risk we are quietly passing to the customer, and it is checked as current rather than as having once existed.
- Commercial insurance
- A passenger-carrying commercial policy, in force. A private policy does not cover a passenger carried for hire, so the class of the policy is checked as carefully as the date it runs to.
- Fitness certificate
- Current. The certificate is the record that a vehicle has been put in front of an inspector and passed, so a lapsed one means it has not been examined since that date.
Before a driver is given a duty slip
The same list whether he is on our payroll or the operator’s. A corporate account can have this in writing, and it goes into a contract unchanged.
- Commercial licence, endorsed for the class
- A licence that covers a car does not cover a bus. The endorsement is checked against the class he is being given, not against the class he usually drives.
- Police verification
- On file before he is given a duty, and the same requirement whether he draws his pay from us or from the operator who owns the car.
- Badge
- The public service badge. A driver who cannot produce all three does not get the duty, and the trip is reallotted rather than run.
On the road, and when something goes wrong
The condition checks run on a set schedule and the check is signed by a named person rather than ticked. What follows a failure is the part worth reading, because that is the part a customer experiences.
- The condition check
- Tyres, brakes, lights, wipers, the air conditioning and the first aid box. Anything that fails comes off the roster until it is put right, and the vehicle is not allotted in the meantime rather than being allotted and hoped for.
- Replacement on the road
- We send the replacement and we tell you the moment we send it, rather than letting you work it out from the roadside. You are not charged for the time lost. If the replacement is a smaller class than you booked, you are billed at the smaller class.
- Substitution before the trip
- If the vehicle we allotted cannot run, what comes instead is the same class or better at the rate you were quoted. You get the class you booked, the vehicle it is, and the driver’s name and number the evening before, so a substitution is something you are told about rather than something you discover.
You do not have to pick the vehicle
Send the date, the route and how many are travelling, and the class and the all-in figure come back in writing.
Written quotes 9 am to 9 pm, seven days. The line itself is answered at any hour.