What Are Fleet Management Services?

Keeping a fleet of cars, trucks and 4WDs on the road is a serious challenge.

Fleet maintenance services are something every company has to contend with. One of the most important parts of a fleet management service is tracking maintenance and repair requirements.

Meeting your servicing requirements helps with reducing costs, improving efficiency and extending the lifespan of your vehicles.
If those sound like benefits you’d like to take advantage of, it’s time to learn how to keep track of fleet maintenance.

What is Fleet Management?

Fleet management is the task of overseeing fleet vehicles. This includes:

• Monitoring the location and usage of each vehicle
• Managing maintenance and repair requirements
• Tracking fuel consumption
• Planning and optimising routes
• Monitoring driver performance and health
• Collecting and reporting on vehicle data to reduce costs
• Ensuring the fleet meets environmental and compliance standards

If you’re running a fleet with dozens or hundreds of vehicles, this quickly becomes a full-time job. Most modern firms use special software packages that keep track of details relating to each vehicle in the fleet.

Fleet management software varies widely in its complexity. In most cases, the software is paired with a module that’s installed inside each vehicle. The module reports data like vehicle telematics (location, driver behaviour, engine diagnostics), fuel consumption and maintenance information back to the fleet manager.

The fleet managers then use the data provided by the software to plan maintenance and optimise the use of the fleet.

Reducing Fuel Consumption

Fuel is a major expense in a fleet. Reducing consumption is one of the main goals of fleet management.
This is primarily done in two ways:

• Ensuring maintenance is completed on time to improve vehicle performance and efficiency, and
• Optimising travel routes (especially in the trucking industry) to reduce fuel consumption.

Fleet route optimisation is the process of figuring out the fastest and most fuel-efficient route of travel. This not only saves money, it means drivers will be less fatigued and spend less time stuck in traffic.

On average, route optimisation reduces travel time by about 15%, and can reduce average consumption by 20-40%. Across an entire fleet, that could be millions of dollars in savings.

The Benefits of Fleet Maintenance

Maintaining company vehicles is a huge part of managing expenses and keeping your business moving. Managing your fleet’s maintenance schedule and carrying out regular servicing offers three major benefits:

• Reduced costs – Fleet maintenance, servicing and repairs cost money. Across the life of a vehicle you can expect to spend tens of thousands keeping it on the road.
  
  The best way to manage those expenses is with regular fleet maintenance. Preventative maintenance is far cheaper than dealing with breakdowns and regular repairs, and it can dramatically extend the lifespan of your vehicles.
• Increased uptime – A fleet is only effective when it’s on the road. Breakdowns are bound to happen, but it’s important not to let a lack of maintenance lead to consistent downtime.
  
  Regular fleet maintenance keeps your vehicles in better condition, reducing breakdowns and costly downtime.
• Improved safety – Looking after the safety of your employees should always be the top priority. A fleet that’s regularly serviced will provide better safety standards.
  
  That not only protects employees from unnecessary risk, it shows that you value their safety, and it makes them more likely to contribute to the company’s success.
• Compliance – Road transport companies operate some of Australia’s largest fleets. These fleets must comply with the Heavy Vehicle Emissions Standards for Cleaner Air.
  
  Meeting compliance standards requires regular maintenance to exhaust and emissions systems. Reducing emissions benefits the wider community, and it’s something that’s specifically checked during inspections by the National Vehicle Regulator.

How to Keep Track of Fleet Maintenance

Most fleet operators use fleet management software to track maintenance requirements. This software connects to sensors in each vehicle to collect real-time information about its location, condition and usage.

The right fleet management software makes it simple to keep track of fleet maintenance. At a glance, you’ll be able to see which vehicles are due for servicing, which ones need repairs and whether any vehicles have reached the end of their service life.

Having that information makes it easy to coordinate your servicing and repair needs with a fleet maintenance provider.

Some software packages can even automate this process! You can use the software to establish service intervals based on mileage or vehicle condition. When these intervals arise, the software automatically books an appointment with your maintenance provider to ensure there’s no downtime.

Working with a Fleet Maintenance Provider

Fleet maintenance providers specialise in regular maintenance, servicing and repairs for commercial fleets.

Even if your business only operates a handful of vehicles, keeping up with maintenance requirements can be tough. Coordinating individual appointments, transporting vehicles between workshops and reallocating workloads can be seriously time consuming.

Working with a dedicated fleet maintenance provider means you’ll have easy access to expert help without any of the hassle or downtime.

As an added bonus, you may even be able to work with a mobile fleet mechanic. Mobile fleet mechanics can come to your site and provide servicing without having to transport vehicles to and from workshops.

That makes the process simple and reduces the hassle of servicing, which incentivises your team to keep up with vehicle maintenance.