Preventive maintenance is the cornerstone of any fleet management best practices program. In its rawest form, such an effort simply means developing strategies that will help avoid an unscheduled event for your equipment.
No good can come of an unscheduled event which may occur on the road or within a fleet’s own facility. With routes and trips designed to meet customer demand, a fleet’s operations group faces a number of challenges associated with such an occurrence. The impact of a late arriving load, increased costs associated with repairing equipment under emergency conditions and ensuring an alternate means of delivering the load are key concerns. Driver satisfaction is also affected by such an event.
The most obvious step toward preventing an unscheduled event involves a regular inspection process. The development of personalized equipment inspections and parameters linked with appropriate timeframes is easy. Meeting these timeframes depends on the priorities of a fleet operations leader.
Maintenance goes a long way toward the execution of the inspection. With operations tasked with planning and carrying out related work, fleets that are successful in their maintenance endeavors follow several best practices.
These efforts include:
- Using weekly reports which highlight overdue inspections
- Examining the percentage of overdue inspections
- Utilizing the figures as a key benchmark
- Tying the bonuses and incentives of operations managers to overdue inspections
An automated approach to tracking inspections and related timeframes goes a long way toward delivering an efficient and cost-effective method of maintaining a fleet.
Inspections can be generated electronically for loading into a repair order. Completed inspections can then be automatically updated providing the most accurate and current information. A cloud-based platform offers a shared view on the latest status of equipment. The percentage of overdue equipment can then immediately be calculated and reported on in a fleet management dashboard.
The manpower and energy involved in keeping a truck on the road and delivering a load on- schedule is significant. Make sure this hard work doesn’t evaporate with an unscheduled event and bad things won’t happen to you.
Comments (2)
I agree with this article. in addition , having a former DOT Enforcement Officer actually come on site and run your equipment through the SAME Level One inspection that you would face out on the highway can also be a great benefit.
That is what I do. I just retired after 25 years as a Police Officer , 12 years of which I was certified as a DOT Enforcement Officer. I now travel around the Mid-Atlantic Area performing truck inspections for clients at their site. I have discovered many OOS and other violations and that gives the company an opportunity to fix the problem before the truck goes out on a run.
A typical inspection takes about 30 minutes per truck and with my background and experience , I can do a thorough inspection knowing 49 CFR and the OOS criteria. I know that the DOT officers are looking for and I can give your equipment a spot check to make sure your maintenance pm’s are working.
Don’t continue to rack up those OOS violations , CSA points and down time out along the highways.
I can be contacted though my email at dotinspector@gmail.com or 717-324-2555.
Andy — thank you for your comment. I’ve been meaning to get back to you, will reach out directly soon.
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