Free printable · for crew leads & small fleet owners
Free Daily Vehicle Inspection Checklist
A daily vehicle inspection checklist is the sheet a driver fills in during the pre-use walk-around, before the vehicle moves: brakes, tires, lights, leaks, seat belts. This is that sheet for one pickup or van: what was checked, what was found, who looked, what happened about it. Fourteen coded checks, PU-01 to PU-14, each marked OK, DEF or N/A, with seven marked STOP, where a defect takes the vehicle off the road until it is repaired or the repair is certified unnecessary. That STOP rule is the sheet's own, not a legal requirement: the list is adapted from the 49 CFR 396.11(a)(1) parts list rather than required by it, because most pickups and vans are not commercial motor vehicles. It has lines for the date, shift, vehicle, odometer and signature, plus a defects box keyed to the item codes. It comes filled in twice, from an invented fleet.
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Direct download. No email, no account — just the file.
What it does
- The 14 checks, in the order you walk them: PU-01 service brakes, PU-02 parking brake, PU-03 steering, PU-04 tires, PU-05 lug nuts and wheels, PU-06 lights and signals, PU-07 horn, PU-08 wipers, PU-09 mirrors, PU-10 windshield, PU-11 seat belts, PU-12 fluid levels, PU-13 leaks, PU-14 registration and insurance.
- Seven of the 14 are STOP items — PU-01 service brakes, PU-02 parking brake, PU-03 steering, PU-04 tires, PU-05 lug nuts and wheels, PU-11 seat belts and PU-13 leaks. A defect on one of those takes the vehicle off the road until it is repaired or the repair is certified unnecessary. The other seven get written down and fixed, which is a different thing — though any defect that makes the vehicle unsafe comes off the road too, whatever line it sits on.
- Every line is marked OK, DEF or N/A. The header carries the date, shift, vehicle ID, odometer reading and the inspector who did the walk-around; the foot carries a result line and a signature.
- The defects box takes one line per defect: the item code, what you found, who it went to, repaired or not needed, and the date — so a defect leaves the cab as a code and a sentence, not a scrawl.
- Two worked examples come filled in from an invented fleet: a brake light out on a pickup at 48,295 miles, fixed the same day; and a slow leak at a valve stem on a van at 63,130 miles, which is a STOP item, so the van was tagged and parked until the tire was done.
- Page 5 is the blank sheet: US Letter, one page per vehicle per day. Print a stack, staple them into a pad, keep one in each truck. Nothing to fill in on screen, nothing to sign up for, and nothing you write on it leaves your own copy.
Related reading
Own it, don't rent it
Running more than one truck?
This checklist covers one vehicle type, on paper, one day at a time. The full workbook runs the fleet: seven coded checklists — pickups and vans, box trucks, trailers, forklifts, aerial lifts, mowers and generators — a 40-asset register that computes each unit's status from its own inspection frequency, a 14-day grid showing which scheduled inspections were actually missed, a 5,000-line inspection log, where every failed item becomes a numbered work order on a 1,000-row work-order register, a critical-defect hold that keeps a unit OUT OF SERVICE until the repair is certified and the next operator signs off, odometer vehicles and hour-meter equipment side by side with a meter-regression check, and a dashboard of open defects, oldest work order and missed-inspection rate. One file for Excel and Google Sheets, with a 17-page guide and printable pads for all seven checklists.
A one-time purchase you keep in your own drive — no per-asset monthly fee, no seats, and nothing that stops working because a plan lapsed.
Not advice: this is a record-keeping aid, not legal, safety or compliance advice. It does not decide which rules apply to your vehicles, and your manufacturer's manual governs. The example fleet, company and people are fictitious. Free to use and to share as-is; please don't resell it.