Fleet maintenance can disrupt your regular flow, but neglecting it will have even worse consequences. Sliding regular (and strictly necessary) maintenance strategies into your everyday operations can be done, and we’ll show you how to do it as smoothly as possible by answering these important questions.
Reactive maintenance is more expensive because it catches you unawares. Proactive maintenance foresees vehicle service needs and plans around them. Your fleet experiences the least amount of downtime and is able to continue operations with less interruptions or unhappy customers.
We did some digging and found that a standard service on a medium-sized truck is from R3 000. Services on older trucks are more expensive because parts often need replacing after the 80 000 km mark. When extensive repairs need to be carried out, you’re looking at over R20 000 for truck maintenance.
Data on your vehicles must be gathered on a daily basis, and this data should be interpreted to display specific components, their real-time condition, and a prediction on when they’ll need servicing or replacing. There’s a logic behind fleet maintenance. Once you understand it, you’ll reduce expenses and simultaneously increase the longevity of your vehicles.
Maintenance calculations for a fleet gives you a version of ROI that takes mileage and costs into consideration. So over the course of a year, take the amount of kilometres travelled by all vehicles (which depicts the productivity of your fleet), and compare it to the total amount of money you paid for maintenance over the same period.
You should be left with a “cost per kilometre” number. This number should be placed against how much profit you made from transport efforts (for either services or products). Once you know how much your vehicles are costing you and how much you’re making, you can determine whether your ROI is sustainable.
Some parts can be fitted with used replacements, but most often this ends up costing you more because they wear faster. If the used parts you’re buying come from a vehicle that was dismantled for completely different reasons to the part itself, this can be a viable way to save money. But it’s always safer to buy new parts.
You budget for fleet maintenance by having meticulous information on all your vehicles. A vehicle diagnostics system helps you recognise ahead of time which parts are about to fail, granting you enough time to set aside the necessary money.
Cartrack helps you set up a fleet maintenance programme by installing smart diagnostic readers onto your vehicles. These read engine health, spark plugs, tyre pressure & tread, battery levels, and even the state of your transmission.
Once the above IoT devices have been added, we feed that data into our software platform, FleetWeb. You’ll get an applicable display of vehicle service needs that allows you to schedule service dates if & when they’re necessary. Your vehicles no longer go in for services unless they need one, and you’ll only book for repairs that on specific components—which saves costs.
Using real-time telematics allows fleet managers to transition from rigid calendar dates to usage-based maintenance, scheduling service calls only when actual engine wear demands it.
Diesel trucks cost more to maintain because they operate under higher mechanical stress and use more complex heavy-duty components—not simply because filters get dirty faster. Primary cost drivers include:
Engine and transmission problems cost the most to repair if they break or fail, since these are the most expensive components of your vehicles. Keeping a close eye on both can be done through smart telematics systems that warn you when the point of serious damage is approaching, helping you to repair them earlier rather than later.
Yes, EV trucks don’t need as much maintenance as fuel-run trucks, which is why so many fleets are transforming their fleets to electric assets. However, fleet telematics should still be used to maintain batteries (the most expensive component in EVs) and navigate routes for better battery charge efficiency.
