Fleet vehicle inspections are a critical component of any business that manages a fleet of vehicles. With a better vehicle maintenance strategy in place, you can save time, save money, improve safety, and more.
Why exactly are fleet vehicle inspections so valuable, and what opportunities do you have to make them even more valuable?
The Importance of Fleet Vehicle Inspections
Fleet vehicle inspections serve several purposes, including:
– Safety and compliance. Arguably the highest priority of your vehicle inspections is improving safety; vehicles that are better maintained tend to perform safer and more reliably, keeping their drivers and passengers safe as a result. You may also be required to conduct fleet vehicle inspections periodically due to laws and regulations that apply to you.
– Cost savings. Regularly inspecting and maintaining your fleet vehicles also gives you the opportunity to save money. Planning and executing vehicle inspections does cost money, and making repairs costs even more money. However, these expenses are still less than the costs of dealing with protracted issues and issues that are allowed to grow beyond repair. As a simple example, an inexpensive oil change, twice a year, can minimize your chances of experiencing more complex issues, like engine failures.
– Time savings. In line with this, regularly inspecting your fleet vehicles can save you time and improve the efficiency of your organization. With more consistently operable vehicles and much greater reliability, you’ll be able to maintain higher levels of productivity.
– Value maximization. Conducting regular fleet vehicle inspections also allows you to maximize the value of not only the vehicles themselves, but also the warranties associated with them. Taking good care of your vehicles hypothetically allows them to last many additional years, and taking advantage of warranties before their expiration can save you money as well.
– Documentation and learning. Regular inspections are excellent for documentation and learning. Through inspections, your team members can become much better acquainted with the types of vehicles maintained by your organization.
How to Improve Your Fleet Vehicle Inspections
So how do you improve these fleet vehicle inspections?
– Use the right software. One of the best things you can do is use better fleet vehicle maintenance software. The right software program streamlines the process of inspecting fleet vehicles, equipping your employees with all the information and tools they need to conduct and track these inspections. It can keep you organized, establish good workflows, and even provide assistance with automation.
– Automate what you can. The potential of automation is incredible for businesses, so it’s important to automate as many aspects of fleet vehicle maintenance as you can. AI and robotics aren’t advanced enough to do all the maintenance for you (at least not yet), but you should be able to at least automate scheduling and timing for these maintenance events.
– Focus on proactive and preventative measures. Proactive and preventative maintenance is ideal, especially when compared to reactive maintenance. Instead of waiting for something to go wrong, identify risks associated with components that are currently operational, but that could be damaged in the future.
– Provide adequate training and education. Provide adequate training and education to all your fleet vehicle maintenance professionals. If they’re properly trained, they’re going to do a better job, and they’ll all work in much more consistent, reliable ways.
– Employ checks and balances. It’s also a good idea to have some checks and balances in place. For example, you may want a supervisor to evaluate the inspection done by a lower-level employee, ensuring they’ve done everything adequately.
– Focus on consistency. Consistency is key. Even if your inspections aren’t remarkably fast or efficient, they’ll be reliable and cost efficient if they’re executed consistently.
– Work quickly, but don’t cut corners. There’s a fine line between working quickly and taking shortcuts. While it’s a good idea to improve efficiency and reduce the time it takes to inspect an individual vehicle, you shouldn’t push this process so much that it encourages employees to take unnecessary shortcuts.
– Fix issues when they’re small (and fix them correctly). When you discover issues with fleet vehicles, and you inevitably will, make it a point to fix these issues while they’re still small. It’s usually easier, cheaper, and safer to fix small issues than big ones.
– Collect feedback and iteratively improve. Finally, get feedback from your employees and take that feedback seriously. Do your employees have suggestions for how you can improve efficiency or productivity in the future? Do they have insights about the software you’re using?
Fleet vehicle inspections serve many important purposes simultaneously, so it’s important to get them right. Fortunately, with the right software, a proactive plan, and adequate education and training, you’ll be in a prime position to reap all the benefits.
