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A truck may be fitted with the best tyres in the world and even have an astute tyre manager checking tyre pressure and tread wear on a weekly basis but if wheel nuts are loose, these efforts come to naught and a major accident is bound to happen. 

"Truck and wheel safety in this country is still not a big thing, but every year it is becoming more recognised that a ‘safety first’ mindset can save you a lot of money," says Carl Klesser, MD of Checkpoint Developments, who supply ingenious tyre wheel nut ‘monitors’ to the transport industry. 

"Checkpoint is a simple and cost effective product ensuring, by visual inspection, with total certainty that a wheel nut has not loosened. It is a modern, low cost solution to a long standing operational and management problem in the transport industry - that of implementing and maintaining a cost effective control procedure that will give accurate and reliable checks on wheel nuts for tightness. The fitting of Checkpoints facilitates those checks within a daily walk round, ‘zero defect’ reporting procedure. Additional spin off benefits arise from the product’s heat sensitivity. Excess heat build up, for example, from a binding brake, bad driving habits, or worn bearings will be indicated by the Checkpoint, which distorts under excessive heating, melting at around 120 ° C. The product takes the guesswork out of wheel nut tightness-checking and allows a responsible signing off of the inspection," says Klesser.