Fleet management: how to improve it through maintenance management

Having control over the status of fleet vehicles and their maintenance has a dramatic impact on fleet management and, as a consequence, the profitability of a business.

 
We often talk about best practices for maintenance and on the importance of having an effective maintenance system and schedule for your fleet to be safe and efficient, but in this post we concentrate on the advantages of keeping track of maintenance.

  
If we consider a fleet’s global economy, we can see how maintenance management can make a positive impact in the following ways:

 
1 - Maintenance management is crucial in cost control

Vehicles are not always in perfect working order—how we wish they were!—deterioration is inevitable, as are breakdowns, defects or incidents. If you have maintenance under control and keep up to speed with tests, certifications, servicing and repairs to vehicles, you can avoid unexpected costs, especially the substantial outlay of having to purchase a replacement for an inefficient vehicle that has suddenly become too costly to maintain.
           

If you are made aware of which vehicles in your fleet need repairing, which are responsible for higher maintenance costs and the average cost of maintenance per vehicle over a specific period of time, you will be better placed to predict expenditure and allocate funds more judiciously.

 

Vehicle costs can be compared over different time frames, if there are spikes in vehicle costs, the precise reasons can be easily ascertained—it’s a simple matter to check different routes, vehicle usage, maintenance and so on…

 

Having complete control over maintenance, and developing a consistent maintenance programme radically improves the safety of employees, drivers and other road users as well as enhancing the service offered by your company.