You know that managing a fleet is no easy task. To keep your fleet as operational and profitable as possible, you have to balance many aspects. You leave your fleet vulnerable to costly repairs, downtime, and a halt in productivity without doing so. To be an effective fleet manager, you have to form a regular maintenance plan and stick to it.
With Jaltest commercial diagnostic kits from Triad Diagnostic Solutions, you can keep a regular maintenance schedule for your commercial fleet. Below, we’ll be discussing what commercial fleet maintenance entails and why routine care is required for success!
Why is Commercial Fleet Maintenance Important?
Commercial fleet maintenance refers to keeping your service vehicles in good condition to avoid costly breakdowns. Fleet maintenance is a proactive and systematic approach to preventative vehicle maintenance.
Rather than waiting for an unexpected problem to occur, fleet managers perform regular maintenance to avoid these issues as much as possible. A routine schedule keeps your drivers safe, reduces operational costs, and boosts productivity while effectively reducing downtime.
The Benefits of Regular Maintenance For Your Fleet
Fleet maintenance and repair should be one of the most important considerations on your daily checklist of tasks. Ensuring that the vehicles in your fleet are always in tip-top shape is often the deciding factor between a booming enterprise and a failing company. In discussing the cost of not doing regular maintenance on your commercial fleet, we must examine the benefits.
1. Improved Safety Measures
The first benefit of regular commercial fleet maintenance is one of the most important: improved safety measures for your drivers.
According to a study conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), it was reported that a whopping 27 percent of accidents involving one truck and one passenger vehicle were the result of braking issues. This is just one example of how important it is to perform regular maintenance on every vehicle in your fleet. When you go without doing the work to properly maintain brakes, tires, and other mechanical components and systems, you’re asking for trouble. These systems and components can fail at any time. But performing regular maintenance on your fleet assures you that no problems lie undetected beneath the surface. This significantly boosts safety measures for your drivers and the general public.
2. Prevents Costly Downtime Within the Fleet
It should come as no surprise that one of the main objectives of performing regular maintenance is to prevent roadside breakdowns. Regardless of your industry or company size, a vehicle breakdown results in a profit loss. Therefore, routine maintenance means your fleet stays operational, and your deadlines are always met.
Additionally, you’re better equipped to catch issues early on, allowing you to schedule repairs around the needs of your business. For example, when suddenly hit with a vehicle breakdown, you’re forced to deal with the issue immediately while setting aside other important business matters. Preventative maintenance means that you can schedule essential repairs at a time that works best for your schedule, further reducing unnecessary downtime.
3. Fewer Issues With Compliance
As a fleet manager, your fleet must abide by a list of federal, state, and local laws. A few things you have to worry about regarding compliance include regulations, reporting, registrations, FMCSA safety scores, inspections, and more. However, when you make effective maintenance a part of your routine, you can do more to experience fewer headaches surrounding compliance.
4. Saves Money on Fuel Costs
Finally, you’re likely to see significant savings in fuel costs when upgrading your maintenance plan. By simply changing the filters and oils in your vehicles regularly, you can boost your miles per gallon. Additionally, performing regular tire and wheel maintenance also impacts fuel efficiency. According to Automotive Fleet Magazine, proper commercial fleet maintenance has improved fuel economy by as much as 40 percent!
Triad Has Everything You Need to Keep Your Fleet Up and Running
Now that you understand the importance of making regular maintenance a part of your daily operations, you’re likely interested in developing a maintenance plan. What if there was a way to make performing daily maintenance checks easier? Luckily, there is.
At Triad, we offer a powerful single-source solution that keeps your commercial vehicles on the road. Featuring Jaltest software, our Jaltest Commercial Vehicle Full Kit provides all of the features you need to perform highly accurate dealer-level diagnostics on all of your fleet’s vehicles. Jaltest also includes the GRP (Garage Resource Planning) diagnostic reporting system. GRP produces diagnostic, operation and vehicle data in one easy to read, easy to access report that can be customized for your fleet and saved by unit number.
Best of all, we offer easy financing options for your convenience. So check out Triad Diagnostic Solutions today, and feel free to contact us with any questions. We’ll be happy to help!