Telematics Elevates Preventive Maintenance, Especially for Small Fleets
posted in Alerts by Brian Gray
Telematics Elevates Preventive Maintenance, Especially for Small Fleets
Maintaining equipment is one of the most important tasks a Motor Carrier must perform to ensure safety and reliability. Managing fleet asset maintenance is critical to minimizing the costs without skimping on safety and staying within minimum compliance of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSR’s).
Preventative maintenance (PM) is regularly scheduled maintenance on a vehicle to reduce breakdowns and is done while the vehicle is still in working condition, in order to keep it running at optimal performance levels and greatly reduce downtime.
If vehicles are only brought into the shop when they need something, the program is not preventive, it is reactionary. This type of maintenance program is destined to lead to down-time and the resulting costs of idle equipment.
Large mega fleets have various expensive tools to do fleet maintenance well. But for the majority of fleets on the road, you can now utilize in-cab telematics in order to help stay on top of fleet maintenance.
How to Set Up a Preventative Maintenance Plan
- Perform an inventory of all fleet vehicles. This includes reviewing the maintenance records for each vehicle to determine regularly required maintenance activities and parts.
- Create a PM schedule. Check the manufacturer’s recommended maintenance schedules for each vehicle for frequency and implement a system for sending alerts when maintenance is due (simplified with telematics).
- Establish record-keeping methods. Determine how the information will be reported and where will it be stored, especially in case of an audit.
- Review and analyze the PM program regularly.
Simplify and Elevate Your Maintenance Program with Telematics and NaviGATE Maintenance Portal
Most preventative maintenance programs are missing one critical aspect, which is the ability to actually communicate with the vehicles. That’s where telematics comes in.
Many in-cab telematics that are already running your ELD communicates with your vehicles and can help automate the maintenance process with very little room for human error. Telematics can gather vehicle engine data, such as odometer and engine faults so preventative maintenance can be triggered automatically.
Taking this telematics data a step further, Glostone Trucking Solutions provides a turnkey, customized fleet maintenance management solution using your in-cab telematics data with 24/7 online access to documents, dashboards and data. Our solution can accomplish the setup, notification and the recordkeeping in the four required areas of FMCSR fleet maintenance management:
- Scheduled Maintenance by asset
- Annual Inspection of truck and trailer
- Driver Vehicle Inspection Reporting (DVIR) are performed
- Maintenance Violation Reports are accounted for and repairs documented
Our solutions can minimize the costs associated maintenance by employing workflows such as:
- Customized scheduling of maintenance by asset
- Reminders to ensure assets are taken in for maintenance
- Document retention by asset to ensure audit requirements are met
- Recording and reporting to help analyze cost by asset
- Documenting repairs outside of scheduled maintenance
We set up a maintenance schedule determined by the client and use telematics data to determine when maintenance is due and notify the client. The client responds to the notifications by insuring the maintenance is performed and sends us all of the records. We capture costs, electronically store and maintain all records, which are easily retrievable in case of audit.
Annual maintenance requirements are tracked and documented, driver vehicle inspection reports (DVIR’s) are monitored for compliance, and violation reports are collected and associated with the supporting repair documents.
With Glostone’s NaviGATE, you can access your equipment data 24/7, including maintenance schedule, history and reports. Key documents are available to view and print anytime and dashboards provide a quick snap shot of equipment performance for better decision making.
