Fleet maintenance is one of the pillars of a fleet manager’s job. It can be one of the most significant challenges that managers face, but it can also bring on the most benefit for the effort. What is fleet maintenance? Fleet maintenance is the practice of keeping your fleet vehicles in their best shape to keep them operational and on the road, maximizing efficiency and saving your business money. In this article, we will discuss fleet maintenance management and how your fleet can enjoy its benefits.
Benefits of Fleet Maintenance
Why should you prioritize maintenance for your fleet? There are many reasons. Fleet maintenance will bring your fleet a lot of advantages that affect your business all around. Some of these benefits include:
Increased Safety: Fleet safety is a top priority for any fleet business. Vehicles that aren’t well-maintained are more likely to be involved in accidents. Keep your fleet safe by keeping its vehicles in their best shape.
Higher Reliability: When your vehicles are in the shop for repairs, you’re losing time and, more importantly, revenue. It’s even worse when your drivers are standing on the side of the road with your vehicles waiting for a tow. When you prioritize maintenance, your vehicles spend less time broken down.
Compliance: Federal regulations can cause a lot of hiccups for fleets. There are plenty of federal, state, and local laws your fleet needs to observe, and when you keep your vehicles maintained (and keep records of that maintenance), you'll have fewer compliance issues.
Lower Costs: Maintenance and fuel are sizable expenses for fleets, but you’ll spend much less when your vehicles are in their best condition. Less significant repairs lead to lower maintenance costs. And something as simple as keeping tire pressure up ensures that your vehicles waste less fuel. You’ll be saving money left and right!
Driver Satisfaction: Drivers are much happier when they’re driving better vehicles. When they don’t have to wonder if they’re safe behind the wheel, their job performance improves, and their job satisfaction is much higher.
What is a Fleet Maintenance Plan?
A fleet maintenance plan is the first step in establishing a preventative maintenance policy for your fleet. This process involves three steps that, while time-consuming and involved, equip you to engage in the best of maintenance, ensuring that you catch and repair problems before they cause significant damage or even accidents. These are the steps involved in creating a fleet maintenance plan:
- Create a fleet maintenance checklist: This is the most important step. You will need to thoroughly review your vehicles and include all of the parts that may need maintenance.
- Assess baseline: This step involves putting your vehicle’s information into a database and hopefully integrating this data with fleet software. If your documents aren’t digital, you will want to update them at this point to make them digital.
- Establish Policy and Maintenance Scheduling: At this point, you will want to establish parameters for your fleet vehicles and drivers.
For more details on creating a fleet maintenance plan, particularly on establishing policies and procedures, check out our blog article, “Fleet Maintenance Plan & Checklist.”
Azuga’s Fleet Maintenance Alerts Help You Stay On Top of Vehicle Repairs
It may seem an immense challenge to track all your vehicles, but Azuga makes it a breeze. You’ll receive alerts whenever your vehicles have an issue that needs addressing. Furthermore, keeping track of your routine maintenance needs and records of past maintenance jobs is easy. You can even generate reports showing you what parts or vehicles need frequent repairs so you can make decisions to improve your maintenance process. See what our maintenance alerts can do for you with a free demo!
