Fleetr, a Jooycar company, is the leader in small fleet management and insurance solutions. We have built an AI-powered platform that provides actionable insights to fleet owners with our GPS tracker. We are proud to serve nearly 40,000 connected vehicles via our OBD II device with affordable and easy solutions across several countries. We believe in the power of telematics and big data to address the pressing needs of the small fleet owner and are working tirelessly to reduce costs, improve efficiency and increase safety.
Can Fleet Tracking Actually Help You Save on Maintenance?
Fleet tracking offers a lot of benefits when you are in charge of managing multiple vehicles and drivers. These benefits let you save on fuel costs, increase safety, and save on your vehicle maintenance. Vehicle maintenance can be affordable, or it can be something that bankrupts a business. How do you handle your maintenance for your fleet?
What is Fleet Maintenance?
Fleet maintenance is the process of maintaining your fleet vehicles by keeping up on routine maintenance schedules. The longer your fleet vehicles are on the road, the more profitable your business is.
Fleet managers have a large undertaking when it comes to taking care of the maintenance of their fleet. Keeping up with technological advances can help detect problems earlier, but having a reminder for routine maintenance in the form of a fleet tracking device can simplify things.
Types of Fleet Maintenance
As a fleet manager, you know what it takes to keep a vehicle maintained. There are two common types of maintenance – scheduled and unscheduled.
Scheduled Maintenance – Scheduled fleet maintenance is exactly what it sounds like, maintenance on your fleet that is scheduled ahead of time. These fleet vehicle checkups are great for catching minor medical problems before they become bigger ones. Scheduled fleet maintenance ensures that the minor problems are found, addressed, and taken care of before they cost a lot more.
Unscheduled Maintenance – When unexpected breakdowns or vehicle trouble occurs, it often requires the need for unscheduled maintenance visits. These are almost always more expensive than the routine maintenance visits you schedule and may require downtime within your fleet. It is possible that unscheduled maintenance could have been prevented by routine maintenance.
Planning Fleet Maintenance
In your role as a fleet manager, a significant amount of planning on your part can create a fleet maintenance schedule that may make the entire process easy and rewarding. Using fleet tracking, you can use technology to help you keep track of mileage, maintenance intervals, and get reminders that you need to service a vehicle.
Ask yourself these questions to find out what you need to include in your plan:
- What should be included in preventative maintenance checkups?
- When will the preventative services take place?
- Who will be responsible for the maintenance?
- How can record-keeping be simplified for an accurate and easily accessible maintenance history?
- Where can more information be found about the fleet vehicle and recommended maintenance?
Knowing your plans for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance can help to reduce frustration and save your business time and money. There is an importance to staying on track with your vehicle maintenance.
Making a Comprehensive Preventative Maintenance Checklist
There are things that your fleet drivers can do before and after they are on the road to help with the health of a fleet vehicle. While they don’t need to do comprehensive checks, a quick glance under the hood and at the tires can tell them a whole lot about the vehicle. By making a preventative checklist, you can better create a schedule for your planned maintenance and prevent unplanned maintenance.
Your checklist for drivers could include:
- Fluid levels
- Transmission
- Brake
- Oil
- Gasoline
- Coolant/Antifreeze
- Tires
- Wheels
- Rims
- Brake pads
- Exhaust
- Exterior and Interior Lighting
- Body
- Glass
- Mirrors
- Obvious undercarriage problems
- Wiper blades
Work with your fleet drivers to properly maintain these types of checklists. While scheduled maintenance is important, problems can occur at any time. Checking on these parts of the vehicle may alert to future problems before a mechanic would find them.
Implementing technological products within your fleet vehicles may even help with keeping vehicles properly maintained. One way is to add fleet tracking to your vehicles.
What is Fleet Tracking?
Fleet tracking is done by using GPS satellites that communicate with receivers inside of a fleet vehicle. These receivers are plugged into the OBD II port (on-board diagnostics) and not only monitor driving behaviors and location but it can also be a useful tool for fleet maintenance monitoring.
All around the Earth are GPS satellites that communicate with receivers on the ground. You see instances of this when you are looking for directions to the nearest coffee shop or want to measure the distance between where you are at and where you are going.
That isn’t all a fleet tracking device is, though. Fleet trackers hold a lot of value in a tiny package. Information is often transmitted from the device to the software over satellite, wifi, or a cellular connection.
How can using a GPS tracking system make maintenance simpler?
Even though GPS tracking can help with location, it can also monitor your vehicle’s diagnostic settings. These diagnostic settings can clue you in on what your vehicle may be experiencing, like a check engine light. If your fleet driver forgets to tell you about a check engine light on their vehicle, you may not know about it until it is too late.
The mileage can also be tracked thanks to the direct connection with the vehicle’s computer. Keep track of your fleet’s mileage to ensure routine maintenance like oil changes, tire rotations, and other necessary items are completed when they are supposed to be. Think of it as a way of record-keeping without the abundance of paperwork.
Other Perks to GPS Tracking
GPS tracking offers you other perks, not just those revolving around the maintenance of your fleet. You can manage your drivers and their safety by efficiently monitoring the habits that may make their driving unsafe. Safe drivers also help with creating a more fuel-efficient fleet. The more efficient, the more likely you are to save money and increase revenue.
Use weekly reports to help monitor efficiency and ensure your fleet is in the best shape without sacrificing a lot of money. Let an expert in the small fleet management industry help you monitor your fleet and give you insider advice on what you can do better.
Fleetr: Your Fleet Tracking and Maintenance Solution
Fleetr changes the way that you, the small fleet manager, address your fleet tracking and maintenance. Like other trackers, Fleetr plugs into the OBD II port of your fleet vehicle. From there, you can monitor where your fleet is, how your drivers are driving, and handle maintenance all from your smart device.
Fleetr is different than traditional fleet tracking solutions. Fleetr caters to the small fleet managers, not the large fleets with over 100 vehicles. In most circumstances, a tracking provider requires a minimum number of vehicles in the fleet. Fleetr only requires one, but no more than 100. They are aimed to bring a viable solution to the tracking and maintenance of your fleet.
Maintenance Made Easy
When you have a vehicle that suffers a breakdown, it can be hard on the entire fleet. When vehicles are broken beyond repair (or cost more to repair than they are worth), you are then out several thousands of dollars to replace them. Fleetr helps address the issues of scheduled maintenance, making it easier for you to stay on top of your fleet’s health.
Before, you were forced to rely on driver’s maintaining their driving logs for accurate mileage, now Fleetr takes care of tracking it for you. You can base your maintenance schedules on the mileage increments recorded within the app.
You can now monitor:
- The remaining amount of battery life left in each vehicle, reducing the risk of stranding a driver on the roadway or job site due to failure in the battery
- The remaining mileage before routine maintenance should be performed on each of your fleet vehicles
- How long until the oil and filter need to be changed based on the mileage recorded
- The wear of the brake pads
You can adjust how frequently your maintenance intervals are calculated, letting you be in control of what your fleet needs. You can even be alerted to check engine lights that come on during the course of your driver’s daily schedules.
All of your records are now easily maintained by using the convenient software application provided by Fleetr. When you are done using the system, simply send back your device to Fleetr. You will find that for one low monthly price, you maintain peace of mind with a single fleet tracking system.
Why You Need Fleetr
Fleetr can be a solution for your fleet tracking at only $12.99 per month per vehicle. There are no hidden fees and no long-term commitments when you sign up with their fleet tracking software. The software allows you to keep track of the fleet all using the Fleetr app on your smartphone or device. Customize your driver information, and see how they measure up against one another in terms of driver safety.
Maintenance solutions are easier when taken care of with Fleetr. Fleetr keeps track of your mileage and when you need to get your vehicle serviced. You don’t have to keep track of mileage manually anymore. Fleetr does it for you. Keep your maintenance on schedule and on track with the best no-contract fleet tracker available at a low monthly price.
