Many fleets spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars implementing a  vehicle maintenance management system. They pay recurring license fees to use that software to handle crucial maintenance-related areas such as parts, maintenance plans, vehicle recalls, and work orders. However, many of those companies then turn around and act as though all the time and money they spent putting those maintenance systems in place was burning a hole through their pockets!

I am exaggerating, of course, but the point behind it is valid. Organizations often go through the pain of installing Preventive Maintenance but then rely on employees to manually input the data that software uses as fuel. Engine data such as mileage and operating hours are crucial in tracking usage and advancing preventive maintenance plans. And proper execution of those plans significantly impacts safety and your bottom line. Proper tracking of your   Relying on people to input that data presents a few problems.

Firstly, people are often not as diligent as they should be when it comes to maintaining their own vehicles. Worrying about a company vehicle is even further from their top priority than maintaining their own car.

Also, even when employees do take the time to input data when they should, they are only human and prone to human error. Necessary recalls can be missed, and potentially considerable time is wasted chasing down the correct values.

There are some excellent maintenance management systems out there, but without accurate and timely data to drive them, companies using them fall prey to the “junk in, junk out” problem. Wherever there is a fleet using maintenance software, equipment must be in place to capture engine data automatically.

However, this best practice doesn’t need to break the bank. These days, when people think of onboard equipment to track anything vehicle related, they often think of automatic vehicle location (AVL) modules which typically involve monthly recurring fees. AVL is not the only way to go. There are systems out there that use RF technology to capture engine data when vehicles come within a certain radius of a receiver. This type of hardware usually costs less and does not involve any kind of recurring communication costs.

So yes, properly maintaining fleet vehicles is absolutely crucial, but using a maintenance system reliant on human data entry is doing the job halfway. After all, people are only human!