A highway vehicle can wear its brakes out without using them
This sounds contradictory and it is a real condition. Brake pads can be ruined by not being used properly rather than by being used hard.
It happens on vehicles doing long highway legs. The brakes are barely touched for hours, then get a light, brief application and nothing more. Pads perform as intended when they reach a working temperature and get cycled, and a pad that spends its life warm but never properly worked can develop a hardened, glazed surface.
A glazed pad does not grip the way it should. The symptoms are a pedal that feels firm but produces less stopping than it used to, sometimes a squeal, and a vehicle that needs more pedal effort than the owner remembers.
The owner reasonably concludes the pads are worn out, and they often have plenty of material left. What they have lost is their surface.
How that differs from heat damage
Worth distinguishing, because they get confused.
Glazing comes from light, prolonged use at modest temperature. Heat damage comes from heavy, sustained use, which produces a soft pedal that recovers once things cool.
A vehicle that stops poorly all the time, with a firm pedal, is a candidate for the first. One that stops acceptably and then fades after sustained braking is the second.
Both are worth reporting as what you observed rather than as a conclusion about pad wear, since the inspection will establish which.
What the inspection covers
Pads, rotors, calipers, hardware, hoses and fluid, as a system. The national brake repair page covers what each symptom usually means.
About this store
The Fernley store runs sixteen services and is managed by John Jangula.
See the national brake repair page for all 33 locations.