Fleet maintenance is one of the most critical parts of running a fleet. Proper fleet maintenance keeps your drivers and everyone on the road safe, ensures your fleet’s efficiency, and saves your business money. The first step in ensuring your fleet’s maintenance is covered is to create a fleet vehicle maintenance plan. This five-step process gives comprehensive coverage over all of your vehicles’ needs. This article will go over the process and technology that will help you carry out such a plan.
Creating a Fleet Maintenance Plan
This section will briefly go over how to create a fleet maintenance plan. There are five steps you will need to complete. This time-consuming and arduous process is necessary to ensure your fleet’s safety and efficiency.
- Step 1: Establish a Baseline. You will need to determine the current status of your fleet’s vehicles and equipment. Do a complete inspection of every asset on hand, including detailed maintenance histories.
- Step 2: Determine Maintenance Intervals. How often do your vehicles and assets need to receive maintenance? These schedules may be different depending on the type of asset. Sometimes you may base it on mileage or engine hours. Consider operating conditions, the number of drivers, what the vehicle may be towing, and other environmental and operating factors.
- Step 3: Develop a Preventative Maintenance Service Checklist. This step is the most important and can be the most challenging part of the process. Fortunately, we have an entire blog article to help guide this part of creating your plan. That article goes into detail, but the essential items your checklist should include are:
- Body check
- Oil change
- Any leaks
- Fluids topped up (brake, steering, antifreeze, etc.)
- Basic engine check
- Brakes and rotors
- Oil filter change
- Tire pressure and tread
- Transmission check (especially the mount)
- Rotate tires as needed
- Seasonal tire change
- Exhaust system
- Horn
- Step 4: Develop Driver Inspection and Reporting Systems. Your drivers and operators know your assets better than anyone. Even though they’re not mechanics, they can best monitor certain vehicle parts like tires, windshield wipers, brakes, horns, and steering. As they’re the first to notice these issues, there should be a reporting system in place where they can report them.
Fleet Technology You Will Need
In the past, it would have been a great challenge to track all of the data needed to create a maintenance plan and keep up with the necessary information. These days, however, it’s much more manageable. Many fleet technology options are available to keep track of your vehicles’ maintenance needs.
Telematics
Telematics tracks all kinds of vehicle information, including the vehicle’s speed, location, fuel efficiency, HoS, and all varieties of data to help in the day-to-day operations of your fleet. However, it also tracks pertinent information to your vehicle’s maintenance, such as its engine status, tire pressure, and various other helpful data points. This data can help alert you when it’s time for vehicle maintenance, so you’re never behind schedule.
Maintenance Alerts
It can be hard to keep track of all the vehicles in your fleet, and the bigger your fleet, the harder it is. That’s why maintenance alerts are so helpful. Scheduled maintenance alert software like Azuga’s is integral to your fleet management package. It provides a comprehensive view of your fleet’s maintenance status, including its history, current needs, and trends. A maintenance dashboard houses all of the information in one place, and maintenance alerts ensure that you never miss a scheduled maintenance appointment.
Training Technology
Proper training is a critical part of ensuring the proper maintenance of your vehicles. It’s not only crucial that drivers know how to perform proper inspections, but they also must know best practices for operating the vehicle to reduce wear and tear. Solutions like Azuga Coach provide training scenarios in real-life contexts so drivers can learn these subjects more easily. Furthermore, telematics makes it easier to track the data drivers need for recording their inspections.
Maximize Your Maintenance Efforts
Now you know how to get the ball rolling on your fleet’s predictive maintenance. Partner with Azuga to ensure you have the best support available along the way. Azuga’s technology can help you in every aspect of fleet management, including its continued maintenance. Request a demo of our products and try us out for yourself.
