Keeping those big wheels turning
Mar
Regular maintenance can prevent costly repairs but keeping on top of it can be a headache
While Lynyrd Skynyrd might have sung about it in his ode to the southern states, keeping big wheels turning is actually a full-time job for many fleet managers. Staying on top of routine maintenance is a critical element of keeping their trucks on the road and earning money. Sticking to the maintenance schedule is also a vital way to avoid expensive repairs that are triggered by poor or absent vehicle servicing.
Knowing how challenging it can be keeping up-to-date with servicing the family sedan, you can imagine what a potential nightmare it could be having to stay on top of maintaining hundreds, or even thousands, of trucks, vans, forklifts, diggers and other fleet vehicles.
The old way – time-consuming and unreliable
In the past tedious paper-based systems were labor-intensive requiring drivers or fleet managers to manually check each vehicle for odometer or maintenance clock readings and update log books. Even then preventative services were often missed or ignored because it was too much like hard work to maintain. Irregular or non-existent maintenance often meant costly repairs farther down the track and expensive downtime as the vehicle was off the road for days and sometimes weeks.
Poor maintenance is also a huge safety risk for drivers who rely on their vehicles to cope with the punishing workloads they are often put through, traveling thousands of miles and working long hours in conditions not friendly to machines – dust, dirt, heat, wet, freezing cold or aggressive driving all takes its toll.
So is there a way to streamline the process of keeping on top of fleet maintenance?
The smart way – GPS maintenance tracking
Instead of manually checking every single fleet vehicle every day and logging hour or mileage information to keep service records up-to-date, you can just let GPS tracking automatically store this information and simply alert you when a service is coming up.
Sounds easy, but how does it work?
The video below shows a maintenance schedule being added to a vehicle that is part of the fleet tracked with GPS devices. Within Telogis Fleet, vehicles are easily setup and added to the system, easily categorized and sorted according to teams and truck attributes.
Once the vehicle is added a new schedule can easily be linked to it, using any predefined services that have been setup and customizing it for the vehicle. For example, a service type may be replacing an oil filter. When scheduling this service type for a specific vehicle, the maintenance requirements might dictate that the filter be replaced every 10,000 miles or it may be based on engine hours.
After the schedule has been added against the vehicle, the GPS tracking device and Telogis Fleet take care of the rest, monitoring the number of miles covered and engine hours (if the vehicle’s hardware has been setup to record engine on time).
When the vehicle gets to the predefined alert point added when the maintenance schedule was first entered, it posts a message to the Telogis Fleet message box and alerts the designated supervisor by email advising that a service will shortly be required for this vehicle. After the service has been performed, the vehicle’s service log in Telogis Fleet can be updated and the service tracking resets until the next maintenance is needed.
There are plenty of reasons why fleet owners really can’t afford to not have an effective maintenance schedule in place. Here are a few:
- Reduce fleet downtime – Vehicles off the road are costing the business lost revenue.
- Lower staff costs – By automating maintenance scheduling your staff can be engaged in more profitable work.
- Longer life of fleet vehicles and machinery – By keeping up with a good schedule of preventative maintenance your vehicles last longer and incur fewer problems.
- Central point for all maintenance information – Fleet owners and supervisors have easy, online access to all maintenance and servicing information for the entire fleet at the click of a button. This not only saves time chasing up service records but can also maximize investment in equipment warranties and provide more accurate inventory tracking.
If it sounds good but you just need to know how it will work for your fleet, and what sort of return on investment you can expect, just get in touch with Telogis – they have plenty of hands-on experience in making fleet maintenance headaches disappear!
December 24th, 2011 at 7:37 am
Hi There, I am looking for a simple GPS device that can be fitted to the machine and transmit hours and location. Do have such a device or does your system only come as a complete package? Currently we have a CMMS program, but no means to collect the vehicles hours.