By Bryan Christiansen, CEO and founder of Limble
March 20, 2024
For today’s trucking businesses, staying on the road means balancing all the responsibilities of managing a diverse fleet of vehicles, complying with new safety standards, and mitigating business disruptions from unforeseen breakdowns. Managers know that in order to stay competitive and meet the evolving demands of customers, they must take a proactive approach to fleet management, including how they maintain their vehicles.
Each fleet requires regular inspections, repairs, and maintenance work to promote optimal performance. But staying up to date on vehicles’ unique maintenance needs and relevant processes, while maintaining detailed asset history records, is especially challenging for fleet managers who still rely on outdated legacy systems. By implementing predictive and preventative maintenance processes across their fleets, managers can help reduce downtime, prevent unexpected issues, and bring costs under control.
Downtime in Fleet Management
A recent report from Limble found that downtime and breakdowns is a top concern for maintenance professionals. In fact, estimates suggest that downtime costs a fleet an average of $448 to $760 per day, per vehicle. Even organizations with small- and mid-sized fleets can see these costs become unmanageable.
Fleet downtime is caused by various factors. Unexpected breakdowns due to mechanical issues or internal failures can result in downtime since the vehicle must stop until it is fixed. Additionally, in scenarios where replacement parts are needed, downtime can occur if fleets must wait for the equipment to arrive. Pre-scheduled downtime occurs when vehicles are taken out of commission for inspections to ensure compliance with safety and environmental regulations.
For fleet managers to mitigate the impact of all types of downtime, they must overhaul their reactive strategy and instead embrace a proactive and preventative approach to fleet maintenance that goes beyond the standards imposed by industry regulators.
Preventive and predictive maintenance processes are most useful when managed within a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) that proactively tracks and automates equipment maintenance schedules, parts purchases, and vehicle inspections.
Preventive vs. Predictive Maintenance
Predictive and preventive maintenance are two different approaches to managing equipment and assets more proactively. An organization may opt for one over the other based on the criticality of their assets and their available resources. Fleet managers should aim to implement a maintenance strategy that mitigates the occurrence of unplanned downtime and the impact of all types of downtime while avoiding unnecessary work or undue expenses.
Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance involves performing scheduled maintenance tasks regularly to prevent equipment failure and ensure vehicle reliability. This type of maintenance is typically based on guidelines established with the help of factors like recommendations from manufacturers and regulatory guidelines. Maintenance such as vehicle inspections, parts replacement, and adjustments are performed on a schedule, regardless of equipment condition.
These precautions can mitigate fleet downtime since it helps identify and address issues before they escalate into major problems. Additionally, preventative maintenance prolongs each vehicle’s lifespan by ensuring important parts are always operational.
Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance involves using performance data to predict when a part is likely to fail so that maintenance can be performed on time. By monitoring equipment temperature, and other key indicators of asset health, predictive maintenance processes can identify early warning signs of potential issues and ensure maintenance is performed at the ideal moment. Because maintenance tasks are only carried out when absolutely necessary, predictive maintenance helps to reduce maintenance costs.
Moving Forward
If you’ve ever gotten behind the wheel, you can attest to the fact that road work tends to occur on a reactive basis. Cracks and potholes open up and road crews roll out to make a fix. The shortcomings of this approach are obvious – traffic jams, later arrivals, road rage.
Fleet managers can’t afford to follow these typical rules of the road. A new, more proactive approach will help them speed past the competition by keeping vehicles in optimal condition for longer and more dependably ensuring steady business operations. Fortunately, a growing number of organizations are recognizing the crucial importance of preventive maintenance for minimizing downtime and its consequences.
Limble’s recent survey of maintenance teams found that downtime was their most persistent challenge and that preventive maintenance is their most popular strategy for addressing it. PM is also helping to address common challenges like skill shortages, sustainability requirements, and an aging infrastructure.
Proactive maintenance can’t eliminate obstacles altogether. The road ahead will still present plenty of bumps and unexpected turns. With the right tools and systems in place, however, trucking businesses can feel confident in their ability to keep disruptions to a minimum while keeping maintenance costs manageable.
