Miya Bholat
July 13, 2021
6 Tips for Fleet Truck Maintenance
Keeping your drivers and your fleet trucks safe and productive on the road is the best way to achieve success in your business. When you are working within the fleet vehicle industry, the maintenance of your vehicles can get pretty expensive if you don’t take care of things properly. In this kind of business, you are dealing with a lot of big, 18-wheeler trucks, delivery trucks, tanks, and more. Big vehicles mean big and expensive maintenance bills.
But, that isn’t always the case. Have you ever heard the saying “Prevention is Key”? Well, this statement couldn’t be any truer, especially in the fleet truck industry. When it comes to fleet truck maintenance, prevention is key, and taking care of your fleet trucks the proper way is what is going to save you so much money in the long run.
Well-maintained vehicles burn far less fuel, go through way fewer tires, and experience breakdowns far less than those who don’t see regular maintenance. If you’re looking for tips when it comes to truck maintenance solutions, you’ve come to the right place. We are going to share our top 6 tips for fleet truck maintenance so your trucks will last you a lifetime!
6 Tips for Fleet Truck Maintenance:
1. Proper software
One of the best things you can do for your fleet management business is investing in good, reliable truck maintenance software. Investing in truck maintenance software is going to make daily tasks so much easier, and it’s going to make the data of your business much more accurate and up to date. Having your employees fill out long, handwritten paperwork every day doesn’t always happen, but by investing in a truck maintenance software like AUTOsist, they can now easily go into the software, record their data, and be done for the day.
AUTOsist gives your fleet management company simple and affordable truck maintenance solutions to help you manage your fleet of vehicles, equipment, and all your other assets.
2. Inspections
Another thing you should be doing regularly to maintain your fleet of trucks is regular inspections. Whether they be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly, this is something you should incorporate into your routine to ensure the longevity of your fleet of vehicles. You should always be doing basic inspection of terminals, vehicles, equipment, and recording to ensure everyone is doing what they should, and you can prevent any issues from happening before they arise.
One thing to note with inspections is that if you have a large number of fleet vehicles you are managing, it may be important to hire someone specifically for that role. If you are running 6 other departments as the CEO and owner of your fleet management business, you may not have the proper time to thoroughly inspect your vehicles. By hiring one person for that specific job, they can take their time ensuring each vehicle is up to standard.
3. Cost savings analysis & budget
The dreaded budgeting lecture everyone hates hearing about. While we know how annoying it is to take about budgeting and cost savings analysis, it’s one of the most important parts of fleet maintenance. If you don’t look at your numbers, your amount spent, and the amount you are making, your business may not even be profitable – that’s why a cost savings analysis and budget are so important.
Let say you have a range of 18-wheeler trucks from Freightliner (remember, this is just an example, not a real-life scenario). You did some research and found these are the most reliable trucks when it comes to fleet vehicles. You go out and buy 10 of them to replace your older trucks. You find yourself constantly having to replace the wheels let’s say once a year. The problem is, you aren’t keeping track of the costs of tires each year. While you may think these newer trucks are saving you money because they replaced your old ones, but your older trucks may not have needed the tires replaced each year. Since you aren’t keeping track, you can’t tell if you made a good investment in these new trucks or not. Do you see why a budget and cost savings analysis is so important?
4. Communication between drivers
Depending on the size of your fleet management company, you may have multiple different drivers using the same truck. One of your trucks may have had some sort of engine issue one day, but it may have not gotten recorded because they forgot to fill out the paperwork and they didn’t communicate it to anyone in the company. Then, your next driver comes in and takes that same truck for the day, and blows the engine. He wasn’t sure why it happened, then come to find out it was having issues before and no one reported it. The key to truck maintenance is communication between drivers so you can avoid instances like this. With AUTOsist, we make communication between team members easy!
5. Reporting
Another thing most workers dread, but something that is 100% necessary – reporting. No matter what you have going on, keeping and updating reports for your fleet management company is extremely important. Whether they be reports about gas costs or daily reports from your vehicle inspector. These are all very important things that you and your team need to stay on top of to properly maintain your vehicles. Again, AUTOsist allows you to upload, update, and download all your daily, weekly, or monthly reports all in one place to make it easy for you and your team to stay connected.
6. Plan ahead
No matter what kind of business you are in, you should always be thinking 5 years into the future. You obviously want your business to grow and add on more fleet vehicles and drivers, but are you properly prepared for this kind of growth?
When it comes to proper fleet truck maintenance, we want to ensure you have proper truck maintenance solutions in place before you add on any vehicles or drivers. You want to have the proper solutions in place before so when any issues or questions arise, you are properly prepared.
To learn more about AUTOsist and learn how it can help your fleet management company, head to our main page!
