What Is Fleet Maintenance? (4 Tools Every Fleet Manager Needs)

Imagine your public works team has a work order that requires a field visit. Several neighborhood residents have reported faulty powerlines after a storm. Unfortunately, the assigned worker quickly realizes his assigned vehicle won’t start!

And the city’s dozens of other vehicles are already in use. This one incident causes a huge delay in power restoration that leads to disgruntled customer tweets!

Most businesses rely on vehicles for one reason or another. Organizations of all types depend on forklifts, bobcats, and trucks to keep supplies moving. Some businesses are even in the business of managing a fleet of vehicles and renting them out to others.

Regardless of the size of the fleet, fleet operations are essential to keeping operations moving, preserving company investments, and maintaining bottom lines. Why?

Because a good fleet preventative maintenance program helps minimize unexpected downtime. In this article, we’ll share five tools every fleet manager can benefit from using.

What Is Fleet Maintenance?

Before we dive into our recommended tools, let’s take a closer look at what fleet maintenance entails and why it matters.

Fleet maintenance is a type of regular maintenance that ensures all vehicles remain in working condition and safe for use. It’s a form of preventive maintenance with the goal of decreasing maintenance costs, increasing efficiency, and reducing risk.

Fleet maintenance benefits:

• Cost reduction, including fuel and maintenance costs
• Increased efficiency and vehicle performance
• Better driver safety
• Increased vehicle average life
• Better reporting and analysis
• Enhanced driver and customer satisfaction

Now that we’re clear on the benefits of fleet maintenance, let’s take a look at how to improve maintenance schedules.

4 Tools Every Fleet Manager Needs

Fortunately for fleet managers, modern fleet management software makes scheduling maintenance tasks, tracking maintenance history, and managing parts inventory easier than ever before.

If you’re a fleet manager interested in improving uptime, increasing facility data accessibility, and getting more organized, here’s a list of tools worth checking out:

1. MaintainX

MaintainX is a must-have tool to help manage workflows, regulatory inspections, work orders, and asset management. It also improves communication with your teams.

With MaintainX, you quickly can assign work orders and checklists and communicate across your team with a digital audit trail for accountability. . Workers can share photos and attachments, send unlimited messages, complete vehicle inspection forms, and more.

MaintainX is a simple-to-use app that your entire team can use on the go. Further, it’s the highest-rated work order software available in both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

Workers can leave comments on outstanding work orders to ensure nothing is forgotten. You can assign tasks on the go, check the status of work orders, and, at the end of the day, generate reports to learn which areas of your operation are slowing your team down. If you manage a fleet preventive maintenance operation, you’ll love MaintainX!

2. GPSWOX

GPSWOX is a leading GPS tracking tool that lets you track your entire fleet right from your smartphone. If you’re working with a transportation company or maybe a car rental service with a gigantic fleet, you need a powerful tracking tool like GPSWOX.

GPSWOX lacks collaborative functionality and the ability to run inspections but can help track fuel use and routes.

Noteworthy features:

• Real-time tracking
• Geofencing
• Fuel savings by monitoring fuel consumption at various routes
• Point-of-interest tool lets you add specific locations, such as hotels and gas stations
• Mobile app available for Windows, Android, and iOS
• Instant notifications about vehicles based on your selected variables, such as getting notified when a vehicle reaches a certain speed. This helps you maintain the optimal speed across all routes for best mileage.
• Supports a range of trackers, such as Bofan, Coban, and others

GPSWOX is a fleet maintenance management tool for fleet managers who need to know where each vehicle is at all times. If your employer has trackers installed in the vehicles, switching to GPSWOX won’t be an issue.

3. NexTraq

NexTraq is a multi-purpose fleet maintenance tool that provides users with four different fleet maintenance programs:

1. Driver safety
2. Fleet visibility and productivity
3. Mobile workforce
4. Maintenance and ELD compliance

Fleet visibility and productivity is its GPS tracking solution, while the mobile workforce is where you use its app. Driver safety is an important fleet maintenance management solution that you get with NexTraq.

Statistics show that more than 2 million drivers experience permanent injuries in car accidents every year in the US.

As a fleet manager, you aren’t just responsible for the vehicles, but you need to ensure driver safety too. This is where NexTraq’s driver safety solution can help you. While it lacks collaborative communication functionality, it offers the following features:

• Dashcams
• MobileBlock feature that blocks drivers’ smartphones and tablets during driving
• Driver accountability with the help of a driver safety scorecard in which drivers are rated based on speed, braking, acceleration, and cornering
• Drivers are trained using the driver training program
• It makes drivers more aware of the importance of their safety

Maintenance and ELD compliance is another solution by NexTraq that helps specifically with vehicle maintenance, such as:

• Fleet maintenance log can be maintained using a tablet or smartphone
• It logs hours of service, driver, and vehicle inspection reports, and records of duty status
• Engine diagnostics
• Electronic fleet maintenance logs
• Complete vehicle maintenance module

4. Trello

Trello is a functional introductory tool for fleet managers. While the interface is limiting for teams with a lot to do, its simple interface can help managers of small fleets keep track of what needs to be done.

Trello is a free collaboration tool that lets you easily communicate, organize, prioritize, and work on your projects. It won’t let you miss an important deadline. You can create boards, lists, and cards that let you communicate and organize your projects.

Fleet managers will find Trello limiting if they need to easily retrieve historical data for specific assets, track trends over time, or create standardized procedures, but managers will certainly find themselves more organized than if they weren’t using any tool to help.

Where Should You Begin?

If you’re serious about fleet maintenance, and if you really want to do an exceptional job at your company, consider the merits of integrating some of these tools.

Switching to these tools may seem complicated and expensive. Teams find the most success by implementing one tool and new process at a time. For instance, by starting with MaintainX, you can begin automating your recurring work orders, collaborating, and managing your workforce in the field. If you find gaps in functionality, like GPS tracking, you can then implement GPSWOX to track your vehicles.

Once your team is up and running with modern tools, you’ll wonder how you managed without them! And, yes, you’ll be able to manage most of the tasks and projects from your computer and/or smartphone. That’s the power of using tools for fleet maintenance programs.