I’m not an engineer but my thought is that truck brakes on a Basic Utility Vehicle (BUV) will last a really long time. After all, the BUV is 1/3 the weight of a truck and goes about 1⁄4 of the average speed, at 20 mph. It would seem that the BUV’s truck brakes would last ten times as long as a BUV in Africa than they do on a pickup truck in the USA.
Here’s my rough math:
BUV brake load = 1/3 pickup weight x 1/4 average speed of pickup x applied 1/2 as often = 1/12 the load of the brakes on a first world pick up.
Or in plain English: a BUV is one-third the weight of a pickup truck, and goes one-fourth the average speed. If you apply the brakes half as often, you’ll put one-twelfth the load on those brakes as you would a pickup truck here in the United States. To me, that means the brakes will last a really, really long time.
I asked Will Austin how often he has to send out brake drums or brake hardware kits to our BUV owners around the world.
“Never,” he said. “Our oldest units now have 9 years of service in the field, and we’ve never had to replace the brakes.”
