How It Works What Gets Reported The Odds Wheel-Offs Safety Ratings Straight Talk FAQ Book a Demo →

The wheel that comes off was wobbling for six miles first.

Somebody was behind that truck and saw it. They had no way to tell the driver, and no way to tell you. A QR sticker on every unit changes that — one scan, and your driver and your safety manager are both alerted right away, with GPS. No hardware. Works with any telematics platform, or none at all.

Book a Free Demo → See What Gets Reported
18.1%
Vehicles Placed OOS
~41%
Brake-Related OOS
21.4%
Tire-Related OOS
$50K
Max ON Wheel-Off Fine
Dual
Driver + Manager
The Gap

Nine hours where nobody looks at your truck

Your driver does a pre-trip at 5:40 in the morning. It's dark, it's cold, and everything checks out — because at 5:40 in the morning, everything was fine.

By eleven o'clock the left rear outer on the drive axle has developed a wobble. Not dramatic. Just enough that the guy in the Corolla two lengths back notices it and thinks, that doesn't look right.

He wants to do something. There's no number on the back of that trailer, and if there were, he's doing 110 and isn't about to dial it. He backs off, changes lanes, and puts three hundred metres between himself and your truck.

He was the last person who could have stopped this, and the system gave him nothing to work with.

Somewhere between the pre-trip and the end of shift, that truck is inspected by exactly one person — your driver, once, before anything went wrong. In between, it's seen by thousands of people, from angles your driver physically cannot see. The inside of a dual. The far side of a trailer. A hub oozing oil. A strap that came loose forty kilometres ago.

NotifyMeFleet puts a QR sticker on every unit and turns those thousands of people into the only continuous inspection your fleet actually has. One scan, and your driver gets the alert at the same moment you do — because your driver is the one who can pull over before it is too late.

How It Works

One scan. Two alerts.

The dual alert is the entire point. Telling the safety manager alone means a phone call to a driver who may be an hour from an exit. Telling both means the truck can stop now.

1
Sticker on every unit
Weatherproof QR decals on tractor, trailer, straight truck, van, or pickup — rear and both sides, so it's visible from wherever somebody happens to be looking. Each unit carries its own code.
2
Anybody can report it
Phone camera, no app, no account. They pick the defect from a plain-language list, add a note or a photo, and send. Works from a following vehicle at a red light, a fuel island, or a loading dock.
3
Driver AND manager alerted
Both get SMS and email right away, with the unit ID, the defect, GPS coordinates and a timestamp. Your driver can pull over before you've finished reading it.
4
Logged automatically
Report, response, and resolution recorded against the unit. That becomes your defect history — useful at a maintenance audit, a renewal, and anywhere someone asks what you knew and when.
What Gets Reported

Everything your driver can't see from the cab

These are the defects a member of the public can actually identify from outside a moving or parked commercial vehicle — no training, no expertise, just eyes. The report form uses plain language, not shop terminology.

Wheel end
Highest severity
  • Wheel wobble — visible side-to-side movement at speed
  • Missing or loose lug nuts — including rust streaks running off the studs
  • Smoking or glowing wheel end — bearing failure or a dragging brake
  • Oil slung across the rim and tire from a failed hub seal
  • Audible grinding or squeal from a wheel position
Tires
21.4% of vehicle OOS
  • Flat inner dual — nearly invisible to the driver, obvious from beside the truck
  • Sidewall bulge or severe cut exposing cord
  • Tread separation, chunking, or rubber peeling away
  • Smoking tire or a visibly flat-running position
  • Debris trailing behind the vehicle
Brakes
~41% of vehicle OOS
  • Smoke from a wheel position on or after a grade
  • Burning smell noticed at a light or a fuel stop
  • Visible dragging or a wheel not turning freely
  • Audible air leak while parked
Lights & visibility
~14% of vehicle OOS
  • Brake light or turn signal out — the driver never sees this
  • Marker, clearance, or trailer lights dark
  • Trailer lighting disconnected or dangling
  • Lenses caked in mud or dust until they're effectively out
  • Missing or illegible plate, or obscured reflective tape
Load & securement
~11% of vehicle OOS
  • Loose or flapping strap, or a strap already broken
  • Torn tarp, or an uncovered load riding high
  • Load visibly shifted, leaning, or protruding
  • Rear doors unlatched or swinging
  • Debris falling from a dump box, roll-off, or open trailer
Fluids & leaks
Often first sign of failure
  • Fluid trail on the road behind the vehicle
  • Oil, coolant, hydraulic, or fuel visibly running or dripping
  • Audible air leak from a line or fitting
  • Leaking cargo — critical on liquid, waste, or bulk loads
  • Heavy exhaust smoke or steam
Coupling & dragging
Visible only from outside
  • Landing gear partially down or not fully retracted
  • Air lines or electrical cable dragging or chafing
  • Safety chains dragging on the pavement
  • Mudflap, bumper, or exhaust component hanging loose
  • Visible gap or movement at the fifth wheel
Winter conditions
Fleet operations
  • Ice or snow slab on the trailer roof — the projectile risk behind you
  • Ice buildup over lights and reflective markings
  • Frozen or packed mudflaps throwing spray
  • Snow obscuring the plate or unit number

Percentages reference the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance's 2025 International Roadcheck results across Canada, Mexico and the United States, and describe the share of vehicle out-of-service violations by category. They indicate where defects cluster industry-wide, not a prediction for your fleet.

The Odds

The catastrophe is rare. The condition is not.

Fleet managers hear "wheel separation" and think it's someone else's problem. Fair enough — it's uncommon. But the defects that lead there are ordinary, and they're being found by the thousand every time inspectors set up.

18.1%
Of inspected vehicles were put out of service
Across 56,178 inspections during a single 72-hour enforcement window in 2025. Roughly one in five trucks that got looked at got parked.
~41%
Brake-related
Brake systems plus the defective-brake category together made up the largest share of vehicle out-of-service violations by a wide margin.
Partly visible outside
21.4%
Tires
Nearly 2,900 tire-related out-of-service violations — flats, insufficient tread, cuts exposing cord, and bulges. The second-largest category.
Visible from outside
~25%
Lights and securement combined
Lighting at roughly 14% and cargo securement at roughly 11%. Both are things any passing motorist can identify without knowing anything about trucks.
Visible from outside
The Point

Three of the four biggest categories are visible from the outside of the vehicle

Tires, lights, and load securement together account for something close to half of all vehicle out-of-service violations — and every one of them can be spotted by a person with no training standing beside your truck at a fuel island. A meaningful share of brake defects announce themselves too, as smoke or a burning smell.

Which means the information already exists. It's being observed, right now, by people who have no way to hand it to you. You are not short of inspectors. You are short of a channel.

The prize isn't only the wheel-off you prevent. It's the flat inner dual you fix at a truck stop on Tuesday instead of at a scale on Thursday, with a violation attached to your record for the next two years.

Wheel Separations

In Ontario, doing everything right is not a defence

This is the one worth understanding properly, because it inverts how most operators think about risk management.

Ontario Highway Traffic Act

Absolute liability, $2,000 to $50,000

Since 1997, Ontario has treated a wheel separation from a commercial vehicle as an absolute liability offence. If a wheel comes off, the operator is guilty. Not presumed guilty — guilty.

The statute states plainly that it is not a defence that the person exercised due diligence to avoid or prevent the detaching of the wheel.

You can have a certified wheel installer, a calibrated torque wrench, a documented re-torque procedure, a spotless maintenance file and a driver who did a genuine pre-trip. None of it helps you after the fact. The provision was challenged on Charter grounds and survived; the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the case in 2004. Fines run from $2,000 to $50,000, and a critical defect can also trigger vehicle impoundment.

Ontario is the most severe jurisdiction on the continent for this, but the physics don't respect provincial boundaries and neither does a civil claim. Elsewhere in Canada and in the US you'll face negligence exposure, a Vehicle Maintenance violation, and a plaintiff's counsel who will subpoena your entire maintenance history.

Here is why that matters for this product. When after-the-fact diligence is worth nothing, the only defence with any value is the wheel not coming off. And a wheel almost never separates without warning — it wobbles, it streaks rust off the studs, it heats up, it makes noise. The warning is there. It's just pointed at everyone except the two people who could act on it.

Reported separations move
Ontario has tracked wheel separations since the absolute liability law came in. Reported counts fell sharply from the late 1990s into the early 2010s, then climbed again through the mid-2010s. It is not a solved problem.
The real number is higher
CVSA has noted that many separations are never reported — a wheel comes off, it's recovered and repaired, and no record is ever created. Published counts are a floor, not a total.
Warning time is real
Loose wheels usually announce themselves for miles before they leave. That window is the entire opportunity, and right now nothing in your operation is set up to use it.
Somebody always saw it
In nearly every account of a separation, someone behind the truck noticed something first. The gap has never been observation. It has always been the absence of a way to report it in time.
Old vs. New

What you have now versus what this adds

This doesn't replace anything you're doing. It covers the hours in between.

Today
Pre-trip, and then hope
  • One inspection per day, at the start, in the dark
  • Driver can't see the inner dual, the far side, or the roof
  • Defects that develop mid-shift go unnoticed until something happens
  • Bystanders who spot a problem have no way to report it
  • You find out at a scale, from a police call, or from a claim
  • Telematics reports engine faults, not a flapping strap or a dark marker light
  • No record of external observations to draw on
  • Wheel-off exposure with no meaningful after-the-fact defence
With NotifyMeFleet
Continuous outside eyes
  • Every hour the truck is in public is an inspection opportunity
  • Reports come from the angles your driver physically cannot check
  • Mid-shift defects surface while the truck can still be pulled over
  • QR sticker gives any witness a ten-second channel to you
  • You find out from a bystander, before enforcement does
  • Covers the physical, visible defects telematics has no sensor for
  • Every report and response logged against the unit permanently
  • The only defence that works on a wheel-off: catching it beforehand
Safety Ratings

Where this lands on your record

Defect reporting and behaviour reporting hit different parts of your safety profile. Together they cover both.

🇺🇸 United States
Vehicle Maintenance BASIC

Under FMCSA's Safety Measurement System, roadside inspection findings feed the Vehicle Maintenance BASIC. Brake, tire, and lighting defects found at the roadside are exactly what populate it. A defect corrected at a truck stop on Tuesday never becomes an inspection violation on Thursday — and violations weigh most heavily when they're recent, then decay over a rolling window. Underwriters pull this profile at every renewal.

🇨🇦 Canada
Inspection violation rate

Under the National Safety Code framework — the CVOR in Ontario, equivalent carrier profiles elsewhere — your Overall Violation Rate is built from separate collision, conviction, and inspection rates. Roadside defect findings drive the inspection component directly. Collisions and convictions carry double weight, which is where our sister product NotifyMeDriving fits; this one works the inspection side.

Being Precise

A public report never touches your record

Nothing a bystander submits appears on your CSA or CVOR profile. Only enforcement does that. What a report buys you is time — the chance to correct a defect before an officer finds it, which is the difference between a repair and a violation carried for the next two years.

It also builds a documented maintenance-response history: what was reported, when you were told, and what you did about it. Underwriters and auditors consistently value a documented program over a described one. NotifyMeDriving covers the behaviour side of the same profile, and most fleets run the two together on one decal programme.

Straight Talk

What this is, and what it isn't

It is not a substitute for your pre-trip or your PM program. Nothing here reduces a legal inspection obligation, and we would never suggest it does. This is an additional channel that covers the hours between your inspections, not a replacement for them.

It is not telematics, and it doesn't compete with it. Your platform reads sensors — engine faults, tire pressure monitors where fitted, hard braking. It has no sensor for a strap that came loose, a light that burned out, a snow slab on the trailer roof, or a hub weeping oil. Those need eyes. That's the division of labour.

We are platform-agnostic and intend to stay that way. NotifyMeFleet works completely standalone — if you run no telematics at all, everything on this page still works. Where you do run something, alerts can surface inside it. We're not going to build a product that only works for customers of one vendor.

The honest open question. This depends on a stranger choosing to scan. We believe they will, because the friction is a phone camera and about ten seconds, and because people who notice a wobbling wheel genuinely want to do something. But it's a belief we're testing rather than a result we've proven at scale. Ask us for a measured pilot — you'll know inside a quarter whether reports are actually arriving.

And the uncomfortable one. This product prevents rare, severe events, which means in a good year you may see very little. That is not the same as nothing happening; it's the same problem every preventive control has. We'd rather say that plainly than sell you a payback calculation we can't stand behind.

Who It's For

Anyone running units on public roads

Class 8 or a one-ton with a trailer — the exposure is the same, and so is the blind spot.

Highway & regional carriers
Long runs between terminals, where a defect that develops at hour three has nine hours to become something before anyone qualified looks at the unit again.
Vocational & construction fleets
Dump trucks, roll-offs, mixers, float trailers. Hard duty cycles, high securement exposure, and loads that shed debris when something isn't right.
Safety & maintenance managers
The people who have to explain the violation, the claim, or the separation. This gives you a defect history you didn't have, and warning you couldn't get.
Owner-operators & small fleets
No maintenance department, no spare tractor, and a single out-of-service order that takes out a week's revenue. The economics are sharpest here.
Integrations

Works with your platform. Works without one.

NotifyMeFleet is built to be useful on day one with nothing connected, and to surface inside whatever you already run if you want it there.

Standalone from day one
Dual SMS and email to driver and safety manager, plus the full web dashboard. No telematics required. This is how most fleets start, and plenty never go further.
SMSEmailDashboard
Into your telematics platform
Defect reports can appear as events alongside your existing vehicle data, so the GPS pin lands where your team is already looking instead of in a separate tab.
Fleet CompleteGeotabIsaacLytxMotiveSamsaraTrimbleVerizon ConnectZonar+ others via API
Into maintenance & work orders
Webhooks fire on every report with the full payload — unit ID, defect category, GPS, timestamp, photo. Open a work order automatically, or route by severity.
REST APIWebhooksCSV Export
Or route scans to your own system
Configure a custom destination URL per unit and scans go straight there instead. We store the URL and route the scan; whatever lives at the other end is yours to build and support.
Custom RedirectPer-Unit
A US company
NotifyMe LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company, serving carriers across the US and Canada.
Live in a day
Decals on units, contacts on the alert list. No hardware, no installation, no vehicle downtime.
No vendor lock-in
Platform-agnostic by design. Change telematics providers and nothing here breaks.
Moderated submissions
Photo and text screening before anything reaches your driver or your dashboard.
FAQ

The questions fleet managers actually ask

Including the sceptical ones.

Because the driver is the only person who can act inside the window that matters. If a wheel is wobbling, the useful response is measured in minutes, and a safety manager who has to find the unit, look up the driver, and place a call has already burned most of that. The dual alert means the driver can be pulling into the next turnout while you're still reading the notification. The safety manager gets it simultaneously — not afterwards — so nothing is hidden and the decision about whether to keep rolling is made with both parties informed.

Our experience is that mechanical defect alerts land very differently from behaviour complaints. Nobody enjoys being told they were tailgating. Almost every driver wants to know their inner dual is flat, because they're the one who ends up on the shoulder in the dark otherwise — and in Ontario, they're the one who gets charged alongside the carrier when a wheel separates. Framed as "somebody is watching out for you," this is one of the few safety systems drivers tend to actually welcome. Framing still matters, and we'll help you with the rollout conversation.

Automated photo and text moderation runs on every submission before it reaches anyone. Rate limiting and device signals catch repeat abuse. Every report carries GPS and a timestamp you can cross-reference against your own vehicle data, so a report placing your unit somewhere it wasn't is immediately identifiable. And defect reports are self-limiting in a way behaviour complaints aren't — a claim that your trailer light is out is either true or it isn't, and the driver can confirm at the next stop in about thirty seconds.

It covers a different set of things well. Engine faults, hard braking, location, and on some fleets tire pressure where sensors are fitted — that's real value and we're not competing with it. What no telematics system has is a sensor for a strap that worked loose, a marker light that burned out, a snow slab on the trailer roof, oil weeping from a hub seal, or a wheel that's started to wobble. Those are visual defects and they need eyes. If you already run a platform, this fills the gap in it rather than duplicating it, and the reports can surface inside the platform you're already using.

No. NotifyMeFleet is platform-agnostic and works entirely standalone — if you have no telematics whatsoever, every capability described on this page still functions. We integrate with Fleet Complete, Geotab, Isaac, Lytx, Motive, Samsara, Trimble, Verizon Connect, Zonar and others because that's where our customers' data lives, but we're deliberately not built on top of any single vendor. If you switch platforms, nothing here breaks.

Rear and both sides on tractors and trailers, so a report is possible from wherever somebody happens to be — behind you on the highway, beside you at a light, or walking past at a fuel island. They're outdoor-grade vinyl with UV-stable ink, specified for road salt, freeze-thaw, wash bays, and sun. Replacements are cheap and included. Most fleets apply them during a scheduled service rather than pulling units in specially.

Worth thinking about carefully, and we'd rather raise it than have you discover it. Once a report exists, you have notice — and a documented record showing you were told about a defect and did nothing is worse than never having been told. That cuts both ways: it's exactly why the documented-response log has value at a renewal or an audit, and it's exactly why the system needs a real triage process behind it. The answer isn't to avoid knowing. It's to have a defined response, which the dashboard is built to support and record.

No, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Trip inspection requirements under NSC Standard 13 in Canada and the equivalent US requirements are legal obligations that this does not touch. This is a supplementary channel covering the hours between inspections. If anything it makes your inspection program look better, because you can demonstrate you're capturing and acting on defects that develop between them.

Reports can be submitted anonymously and most are. We capture the GPS coordinate of the report and a timestamp, not the reporter's identity, unless they voluntarily leave contact details. We don't sell or share reporter data, and we hold ourselves to strong privacy commitments across every market we serve. See our Privacy Policy for details.

Yes. Any unit can be configured with a custom destination URL and the scan routes there rather than into the NotifyMe report flow. Some carriers have an existing incident portal or want a fully branded intake page. To be clear about the boundary: we store the URL and route the scan to it, and whatever lives at the other end is your system to build and support. We deliberately don't reach into it.

The honest answer is that the catastrophic-event case is hard to model and we won't pretend otherwise. The case that does model is the ordinary one: out-of-service orders you avoid, roadside violations that never reach your record, and the downtime and towing you don't pay for. A single OOS order on a loaded unit — the lost day, the roadside call, the missed delivery, the violation carried for two years — typically exceeds an annual fleet-wide subscription on its own. Bring your inspection history and your violation record to the demo and we'll work through your actual numbers, including telling you if we don't think the case is there.

Per unit per year, dashboard included, priced to sit well below what a single avoided out-of-service order costs you. We're finalizing fleet tiers with our first carrier partners now and would rather quote against your actual unit count and mix than post a number that doesn't fit. Book a demo and you'll get a real figure in the conversation.

The NotifyMe Platform

One platform. One dashboard. One invoice.

Defects are half the picture. Most fleets run NotifyMeFleet and NotifyMeDriving together on a single decal programme — one covers the equipment, the other covers the driving.

● Live
NotifyMeFleet
Public defect reporting with dual driver and manager alerts. You're on it.
◷ Coming Soon
NotifyMeDriving
How's My Driving, modernized. Behaviour reports with GPS into a live coaching dashboard — covering the conviction and collision side of your safety profile.
◷ Coming Soon
NotifyMeBins
For operators running containers as well as trucks. Site supervisors scan a bin, enter a company PIN, and dispatch gets a GPS-stamped service request in seconds.
◷ Coming Soon
NotifyMeRV
The consumer side of the platform, for RV and trailer owners on the highway and at seasonal sites.
Book a Demo

Let's look at your inspection history

Tell us what you run and where your violations cluster. We'll show you the full flow — scan, dual alert, triage, log — and work through whether the case is genuinely there for your operation. We respond within one business day.

US & Canada
NotifyMe LLC (Wyoming). Serving carriers across the US and Canada. Pricing available in USD and CAD.
Pilot partners wanted
We're onboarding a small number of carriers as pilot partners with preferential pricing, direct access to us, and measured results you can take to your own renewal.

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