Why is preventive maintenance for commercial vehicles important?
Businesses and individuals across the globe rely heavily on the logistics industry for the movement of goods and this requires either a single truck or a fleet of commercial vehicles. Therefore, commercial vehicle preventive maintenance is of prime importance. Any vehicle maintenance issues can be a stumbling block in the transport of goods to its destination.
Commercial vehicle maintenance costs are on the rise and have a negative impact on the revenue. According to a survey, companies spend $860 on average every year on vehicle maintenance (Source: G2 Tech Marketplace). On the other hand, a survey reveals that vehicle failure issues had dropped from 61% to 57% through preventive maintenance tracking (Source: Webinar Care).
What is included in a preventive maintenance checklist?
A scheduled preventive maintenance checklist helps to enhance operational efficiency and reduce commercial vehicle maintenance costs. Fleet preventive maintenance usually involves engine health monitoring, checking the brake system, electrical components, high and low beam lights, tyre conditions, exhaust functioning, oil inspection, steering system and other important components that might lead to mechanical issues and higher maintenance costs.
How to schedule preventive maintenance for commercial vehicles?
The logistics industry is known for its enormous amount of paperwork involved in the transportation process. Usually, preventive maintenance is scheduled on a pen and paper basis where fleet managers or truck drivers manually check off the list at regular intervals. The use of spreadsheets are also quite common and can be used to monitor and analyze the preventive maintenance tracking history. Digital forms have also been made available to schedule preventive maintenance for commercial vehicles.
However, fleet preventive maintenance software is the most effective and ideal solution to schedule maintenance and keep track of reports to identify potential issues in real-time and resolve them at the earliest.
The benefits of using technology for preventive maintenance
The integration of technology for commercial vehicle preventive maintenance, helps to gain complete visibility into vehicle operations and helps to automate tedious record keeping tasks. Telematics technology helps to reduce vehicle downtime, improve fuel efficiency and enhance driver safety to a greater extent as it provides vehicle diagnosis and updates in real-time. Moreover, it is used widely for preventive maintenance tracking to detect maintenance issues with greater predictability and accuracy.
Integration of fleet telematics with fleet management software can analyze data in order to detect patterns in maintenance issues and help to efficiently schedule maintenance to increase vehicle uptime and lifespan. Interestingly, a study states that companies save over $100 every year on vehicle maintenance with coupons and deals found with the help of fleet management software (Source: G2 Tech Marketplace).
Let’s Wrap Up!
Commercial vehicles require frequent maintenance checks in order to ensure a seamless movement of goods without any mechanical issues that lead to delay and high maintenance costs. Preventive maintenance tracking helps to reduce vehicle downtime, improve fuel efficiency and enhance driver safety. Fleet preventive maintenance can be scheduled manually or digitally. However, the integration of technology for commercial vehicles will be the ideal solution for efficient maintenance checks. Telematics technology and fleet management software can be used for commercial vehicle preventive maintenance.
Axlerate is a unified logistics management platform to unify all fleet-related operations and expenses. Our solutions help to simplify tolls, fuel purchases, fleet expenses, loans, insurance, escrow, payments, truck booking, fleet management and the buying and selling of logistics products and services.
