Fleet maintenance is one of those aspects of fleet management that can make or break you. And while it can be intimidating and frustrating at times, there’s no reason to let it get the best of you. The right approach changes everything!
Why Fleet Maintenance Matters
Fleet maintenance, which is basically the responsibility of keeping your fleet vehicles in safe and efficient operating condition, is important for a number of reasons. This includes:
- Fewer vehicle issues. Proactive maintenance typically results in fewer breakdowns and expensive replacements. Not only does this lower costs, but it also improves efficiency and leads to happier customers.
- Increased safety. When vehicles are in tip-top shape, there’s less likelihood of a safety issue cropping up when a driver is on a route. Fewer issues with brakes and tires also mean less risk of an accident.
- Less paperwork. It’s amazing how much paperwork is involved with fleet management. Fleet maintenance helps streamline some of these processes by reducing work orders, improving efficiency, and digitizing so many of the manual processes that are resource-intensive.
- Long-term ROI. A proactive approach to maintenance might cost more initially, but it significantly lowers long-term costs and produces an abundance of savings.
How to Improve Your Fleet Maintenance
Most organizations understand the why behind fleet maintenance. It’s the how that trips so many people up. Here are a few tips:
- Switch to a Preventive Approach
If you’re still largely depending on a reactive approach to maintenance, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to increase efficiency and save money. Transitioning to a preventive approach will change everything.
The key to switching to preventive maintenance is to integrate the right fleet maintenance software into your strategy. This software can help you accelerate your maintenance operations while simultaneously lowering costs. It does so by equipping your technicians with the real-time insights they need to perform the maintenance that’s required.
A good fleet maintenance solution improves visibility and enhances the overall experience of both your maintenance team and your drivers. It does so by digitizing work order management, codifying standard repairs for less paperwork, and capturing all work for easy and comprehensive auditing. Assuming you chose the right tool, it should fully integrate with all of your other applications for seamless data flow and accuracy.
- Keep the Right Parts on Hand
Having the right inventory of replacement parts is something that really sets the industry’s top fleet maintenance programs apart from the average ones.
Every fleet has a number of parts – like tires, fluids, belts, hoses, and filters – that are needed on a regular basis. Keeping a certain number of these parts on hand at all times prevents you from having to place an order and wait for delivery every single time maintenance is performed. It also lowers costs by allowing you to place larger order quantities.
- Enhance Communication
So many fleet maintenance issues can be prevented with better communication. In fact, this is the one thing that is non-negotiable. If you want to enhance your maintenance effectiveness, lower costs, and improve driver safety, it starts with transparency.
A good fleet management system should give you the infrastructure you need to promote good communication. However, technology alone won’t do the trick. You have to prioritize it (and train people on your expectations. This includes the how and when of communication (as it relates to maintenance issues).
- Hire a Fleet Inspector
As your fleet grows, you should hire more people to oversee maintenance. This includes an experienced professional to fulfill a “fleet inspector” role. This person will serve as a second set of eyes (alongside your fleet maintenance software) to alert your team to any issues that are happening with individual vehicles, or across the entire fleet.
While your fleet maintenance system should keep you in front of any major issues, there’s something reassuring about knowing you have a person looking things over. This gives you another safety net.
Take Your Fleet to the Next Level
It’s almost impossible to have a successful and efficient fleet without taking fleet maintenance seriously. Hopefully, this article has given you a few ideas that you can use to make yours safer and more cost-effective.
