5.3 Vehicle Management
Statement of Intent The management of vehicles shall be organised to ensure legal requirements are met and there is minimal risk of disruption to the service provided
5.3.1 Procedures shall be in place to ensure that road vehicles are maintained in a road worthy condition to reduce the risk of vehicle breakdown and consequent failure to meet customer requirements.
5.3.2 Where legally required vehicle operators shall be registered with the appropriate authority.
5.3.3 Procedures shall be in place in case of vehicle breakdown or accident. The procedures shall ensure that product quality, safety and legality is maintained and should include :
• clear instructions and emergency contact numbers for the drivers
• instructions on how to preserve any specific temperature or other environmental controls appropriate to the load
checks required to be made on the load before continuing the journey
Comments/Actions
5.4 Vehicle Temperature Controls
Statement of Intent Where environment control of product (e.g. temperature, controlled atmosphere) is critical to product safety, legality and quality, the operating limits shall be clearly specified, adequately controlled, monitored and recorded.
5.4.1 The company shall operate procedures to verify that the vehicle and equipment employed are capable of consistently maintaining specified product temperature requirements at maximum and minimum load.
5.4.2 Automatic temperature and time-recording equipment shall be used to monitor and record the temperature of the load carrying area. In the absence of such equipment manual checks shall be carried out and recorded at an appropriate frequency.
5.4.3 Where settings can be adjusted measures shall be in place to verify temperature settings of vehicles prior to despatch. Vehicles transporting chilled and frozen products shall be chilled before loading or the required air temperature achieved within a defined time of loading commensurate with maintaining the specified product temperature.
5.4.4 Loading and unloading operations shall be undertaken in such a way as to maintain product temperature within the specified limits.