How to Better Manage Fleet Maintenance

Last year, Automotive Fleet Magazine surveyed the commercial fleet market to get a sense of the fleet management problems facing the market. Here are some of the issues the magazine identified:

1. Mobile Devices – Fleet managers are under pressure to keep their field employees productive, and that often means plugged into their devices. That can lead employees to feeling like they must check their phone while driving.

1. Challenges With Getting the Right Vehicles – Managers identified a number of fleet management problems related to their inability to secure the vehicles they need. Vehicle model year production years have been scrambled and mid-size trucks have been hard to secure. Additionally, more managers are seeing internal challenges with their procurement decisions as legal and risk management personnel are weighing in more frequently.

1. Fuel Price Uncertainty – Fuel prices have been low for some time, and many fleet managers say it is difficult to maintain discipline over fuel use when prices are low. Fleet managers try to keep good systems in place because they do not want to be caught off guard by a sudden uptick in oil prices.

1. Reimbursement Headaches – Many fleet managers give their drivers the option of reimbursement for using their own vehicle, and this is particularly popular with young drivers that see the cash and do not think about long-term upkeep costs. This can cause a lot of extra paperwork, however.

1. Drowning in Regulations – Fleets are scrambling to stay current with safety and environmental regulations. Many in the industry view new regulations as revenue generators for state and local governments that are not actually adding safety or environmental value to citizens, but the government is driving up compliance costs anyways.

We have just what the doctor ordered: ZenduMaintenance, also known as ZenduMA. The product is a web-based system that allows fleet managers to coordinate their entire maintenance operation online. It is also largely automated. The system collects a range of data from all a fleet’s vehicles, including diagnostic faults, engine hours, voltage, fuel used, tire pressure, and odometer readings. ZenduMA also collects data directly entered into a mobile device for driver vehicle inspections and driver duty time.

ZenduMA can greatly improve fleet performance. Managers and maintenance crews can be automatically notified of what vehicles need their tires rotated based on pre-set timing or inflated because of abnormal pressure readings. Diagnostic faults that cause reduced mileage can be automatically scheduled for service instead of dragging on. The system can create custom reports to help fleet managers review what vehicles are performing best and what are causing fleet management problems and should be replaced.

ZenduMA makes compliance monitoring a piece of cake. Inspections are automatically scheduled at the appropriate time, driver’s duty time is appropriately logged, and all this information can be quickly printed off into the necessary format to provide to regulators. The system can also be coupled with add-ons to flag inappropriate behaviors by drivers, such as speeding or using mobile devices while driving.