Large vans have the worst MoT pass rate of any vehicle type seen on UK roads, so commercial vehicle repairers could generate new workshop business by targeting direct marketing towards that business.

The advice comes from the Retail Motor Industry Federation (RMIF) which took the statistics from recently published Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA), which shows that 44.7% of vans weighing between 3,000kg and 3,500kg fail the MoT, compared to 35.2% for cars and small vans.

The top three failure items for these vehicles were:

  • Brakes: 32%
  • Lights: 29.8%
  • Suspension: 14.9%

 These would all be covered in a regular service.

Stephen Coles, head of the RMIF's MoT technical operations, said: “With such a high MoT failure rate, it is clear that very little maintenance work is being performed on these vehicles.

“Their owners may not realise that prevention could be cheaper than cure in the long run. This means that with correctly targeted marketing, commercial vehicle repairers could generate new business.”