Trucking companies live and die on their maintenance programs. And as trucking companies grow and take over more territory, it becomes even more important for them to keep up with the maintenance needs of a lot of commercial motor vehicles. What can they do? Perhaps now is the time to learn how partnering with a national maintenance provider can improve uptime while reducing costs and risks.
How focused are you with keeping your trucks on the road? If you don’t realize what’s at stake when your trucks are sidelined, consider that in in 2015 alone, trucks moved 10.5 billion tons of freight — 70% of the U.S. total! That is a staggering number. Even more, the United States has 3.4 million Class 8 trucks and 3.5 million truck drivers. When it comes to keeping your trucking company afloat, numbers like this matter.
Should You Outsource Maintenance?
Rising maintenance costs. Data analysis overload. Not enough time dedicated to equipment upkeep. Does any of this sound familiar when thinking about your company’s fleet maintenance department? No doubt it does. Just about any trucking industry professional will tell you that keeping commercial motor vehicles in peak condition is no easy feat.
National fleet maintenance providers are companies that manage all your maintenance needs in one place. They are dedicated to improving operating efficiency by developing a solid maintenance plan specific to your business.
One of their primary focuses is to keep vehicles running so that you don’t have to worry about equipment failure. This is especially helpful for trucking companies that have trouble maintaining their own in-house maintenance operation. Today, we want to discuss the numerous advantages of outsourcing your national maintenance program and how it can benefit both private and for-hire fleet organizations.
Smart fleet managers look at fleet maintenance as one of the most important divisions of their business. While some trucking companies hire in-house teams, others hire national maintenance providers to keep their equipment in top shape. Perhaps it is time to explore the benefits of outsourcing fleet care to see if it’s the right decision for your company.
Eliminate Risk
Garages are inherently dangerous places and operating your own opens you to tremendous risks. Partnering with a national provider reduces that exposure — and your insurance premiums.
Service Everything
Few maintenance providers and even fewer in-house facilities can handle every vehicle, equipment, and fuel type, but some out there do. It is important you partner with a provider that can handle whatever you throw at them, especially for a national operation.
Schedule Strategically
Maintenance is not a 9-to-5 job. A national provider will schedule around your needs, performing service at night or on weekends for vehicles that need to be running during work hours. Flexibility is key in a maintenance partner. You are trying to offload stress, not create more of it.
Leverage Data
Find a partner that works with America’s largest and most sophisticated fleets. Take advantage of their expertise, master the arts of data mining and benchmarking, and work with them to conceive and launch new fleet initiatives. You want a service provider who works at the cutting edge of technological innovation.
Use the Best Technicians
Good technicians are hard to find and even harder to keep. Let your national maintenance provider recruit, hire, train, and certify the techs who work on your vehicles — and monitor the quality of their work. How do they treat their technicians? Are their techs personable? These are all appropriate questions when choosing a maintenance service provider.
Optimize Processes
Does your national maintenance service provider partner provide a standardized process across all your fleet locations? Streamlining processes and communications makes aligning your maintenance program with your corporate objectives as easy as a single phone call or email. Don’t hobble yourself with a partner who does not meet these specifications.
Ensure Flexibility
Top of their class nationwide providers like should help you stay on top of peak, high-volume periods by surging forces to meet your needs. They should be able to answer the call with whatever resources are necessary to ensure your needs are taken care of.
Grow Together
You need a national fleet maintenance provider who can rapidly scale up new service locations as you expand and enter new markets, providing reliable support for your growing fleet. Sure, you may be a small trucking company now, but that does not mean you always will be. Will you have a maintenance partner with a big enough footprint when the time comes?
Save Money
You want to find a partner that minimizes costly repeats and breakdowns by investing heavily in training and managing technicians. You should look for someone who performs repairs on your schedule to reduce downtime and leverages its nationwide buying power to manage the costs of parts, fluids, and other costly items. They need to be dialed into your business to help you succeed.
Reduce Downtime
Inoperable vehicles negatively impact your ROI, your bottom line, and your customers. A national provider should be willing to set up shop near you or onsite and can reach remote locations or stranded vehicles with a mobile service center. They should understand that your success is their success. Don’t skimp out on a partner helping you with something as important as your national fleet maintenance needs.
Gather Data
Does your partner allow you to set up an online account accessible via a secure web login 24/7? During a roadside breakdown, will you receive real-time email notifications? When a unit is down, can you click on the single tracking link (provided in the email connected to the account) and track the event from start to finish? These are important use cases for your potential vendor partner to examine.
Historical Data Grabs
You should also have access to past and current maintenance data via the website portal your vendor partner offers. Their representatives should work with you to find patterns and other insights that can help increase fleet efficiency. In some cases, they may provide access to internal systems that can provide you with this information.
Making the Case for Outsourcing
While it may seem counterintuitive, outsourcing maintenance services can actually improve the control fleet managers have over their repairs. Why? Because guidelines regarding how you want your fleet managed can be communicated to your service provider, and real-time electronic communication can put more information at your fingertips than you may have today. This is technology at work.
By managing the process, instead of managing the people behind the process, many maintenance leaders and fleet managers find they’re able to spend more time on key decisions and realize even greater control of the maintenance outcome. A greater level of control decreases overhead costs and increases the fleet’s overall efficiency levels.
With so many potential partners out there, there is no reason to not go with one who has developed strong, close relationships with vendors nationwide. Your maintenance partner should assess each customer’s need, preference, and situation before dispatching a vendor, and we continuously follow up with that vendor until the event is complete.
They should want their customers to receive the best service available, and rank their vendors in their system based on price, downtime and quality of work. Vendors should be continuously informed of their ranking position and understand that if they fail to meet our standards it can directly affect the business we provide them.
One of the benefits of going with a company that uses an internal ranking strategy is that it gives them a list of who to call and who not call. Can you learn more about their service providers and how their long-lasting relationships and ranking factors can serve your fleet maintenance needs? These are all appropriate questions that you should evaluate as you do your due diligence.
Remember that it is always about the needs of your fleet. Evaluate everything from the routes you take to the kind of vehicles you operate. A holistic analysis of your operation will lead you to the right national maintenance vendor partner.