Tracking maintenance data is crucial in managing the health of your fleet. Maintenance data offers a wealth of information on assets and can reduce downtime and unnecessary expenses.

Tracking maintenance data for your fleet is beneficial in several ways, such as determining points of failure in preventive maintenance (PM) schedules, reducing repairs by becoming more proactive based on predictive insights gleaned through maintenance histories, and increasing return on investment (ROI) for assets by extending asset life through proper PM.

Maintenance metrics to track

When it comes to tracking any type of fleet data, determining which metrics to track plays an important role in the type of insights you can gain. There are a few key maintenance metrics that are important to track regardless of fleet size and type, including:

• Vehicle specs: Basic vehicle specs, such as year, make, model, VIN and fuel type can help you hone in on asset-specific PM schedules. You can pull VIN-based schedules directly from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and tweak them as needed based on mileage and job type. Acquisition and expected disposal dates are also good to have on hand; these act as a baseline for the projected lifespan of the vehicle, against which you can measure cost per mile to determine if assets are depreciating faster than anticipated. 
• Asset assignment: Tracking asset assignment helps increase accountability and can help you more easily determine driver behavior issues.
• Maintenance (cost and tasks): Recording maintenance histories can mitigate liability if the vehicle in question gets into an accident, but they’re also good for highlighting recurring issues and for enabling predictive insights.
• Fuel Spend: Fuel spend is another metric that feeds into an asset’s cost per mile and can help determine if an asset’s fuel economy is tanking. Paired with maintenance and asset assignment data, fuel spend can help separate mechanical from driver behavior issues to help you correct problems before they start inflating your budget. 
• Cost per mile: Combining fuel- and maintenance-related costs along with odometer readings gives you an overview of cost per mile for each asset. Comparing cost per mile against expected asset lifespan can help keep you on track with your asset replacement schedule.

Keying in the right data, correctly

How you track your fleet’s metrics can be as important as which metrics to track, but without some sort of standardization, it can be difficult to ensure you’re consistently tracking the metrics you need to help determine fleet inefficiencies. A customizable maintenance spreadsheet allows you to add fleet metrics you want tracked and helps ensure data is being input uniformly for each vehicle. 

By standardizing the metrics you track, you can more easily gain the desired insights you’re looking for while maintaining consistency in your data.

Rachael Plant is a Content Marketing Specialist for Fleetio, a fleet management software company that helps organizations track, analyze and improve their fleet operations.