Effective Ways to Manage Fleet Maintenance During the Pandemic

The sudden outbreak of the pandemic has hit hard on fleet management and has become a challenge for fleet managers and owners alike. It became essential to have an efficient fleet maintenance system in hand to meet the requirements to connect digitally and cope with the tightening budgets.

Fleet maintenance practices should be followed to keep the fleets healthy and proactive. It helps to reduce vehicle downtime and avoid costly repairs.

Having an effective fleet maintenance system ensures that you can seamlessly control and keep your entire system productive.

Boost preventive maintenance efforts

Scheduling preventive maintenance is essential to avoid vehicle downtime. During this uncertain time, some fleets may have a decrease in work due to the tightening budget.

Thus, if your fleet is facing less work than usual, you can consider this time concentrating on preventive maintenance practices. Taking time to engage in proactive steps will help your fleet operate efficiently when the business operations return to normal.

Regardless of the current demand, scheduling preventive maintenance will ensure that your fleets are ready when you need them. Incorporating a cloud-based fleet maintenance software can let fleet managers create service reminders based on time intervals or mileage and make sure that the tasks aren’t overlooked. 

These fleet maintenance practices will increase the vehicle uptime and avoid unnecessary repairs in the long run.

Keeping your routine operations prevents vehicle downtime and encourages your team that things will return to normal routine eventually.

Manage maintenance remotely

Due to the outbreak of pandemics, as organizations have moved remote, fleet managers and administrative staff are working remotely to reduce the spread of the pandemic. Though it can be challenging for fleet managers to manage the fleet remotely, it has turned out to be the need of the hour. For fleet owners having remote fleet management software, things can be easy and manageable.

The fleet owners must over-communicate and keep track of the fleets and whole processes to avoid communication gaps. For maintenance-related communications, good fleet management software will make it easier for you to assign, track and comment on maintenance processes in real-time and keep an eye on technician productivity and the assets.

Moreover, you can automate the approval process, monitor the status of work orders, and approve maintenance remotely using fleet management software.

Follow safety protocols

Health and safety have become the top priorities due to the rise of the pandemic. Make arrangements to keep your employees and the public safe by following the preventive measures.

Train your fleet drivers and other on-site teams to maintain social distancing and avoid close contact with clients or coworkers. Also, make the use of masks mandatory and sanitize the vehicles and equipment every time you use them.

To keep track of the sanitizing protocols, you can consider adding these details to the fleet management software. It allows fleet managers to monitor the safety protocols and ensure tasks are being done.

Vehicles and equipment should be sanitized at least once a day, ideally before and after each usage. Including basic safety and cleanliness criteria in your routine vehicle inspections is a great approach to ensure that your fleet is contributing to stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Optimize inventory management

Proper inventory management can reduce vehicle downtime if appropriately handled. Because fleet managers can face potential shortages of parts due to the pandemic, also many equipment are shipped internationally.

Keeping track of your fleet’s inventory is essential at this time. You can avoid stockouts during critical times and make the best decisions about usage and reordering by keeping track of inventory levels before important items are sold out for weeks or months.

Managing parts and inventory with a web-based system ensures that inventory levels are correct and alerts you of low levels. This type of inventory insight provides that you prevent fleet maintenance gaps and asset downtime. With uptime becoming increasingly important, it’s critical that minor issues like part stockouts wouldn’t slow down your fleet.

Monitor fleet maintenance

Fleet managers must have a clear view of your fleet’s maintenance expenses and the total operating costs. The absence of appropriate expense data will make it troublesome to calculate the maintenance expense of fleets.

At this point, keeping track of your fleet’s expenses on a granular level is critical to your company’s performance. By comparing your fleet’s bottom line from year to year and month to month, you can estimate future revenue and make the best fleet maintenance decisions in the future.