Reduce your Fleet of Vehicle Downtime

Vehicle downtime is an immense problem for every fleet business. While fleet vehicle downtime is inevitable in many circumstances, there are some steps to evade vehicle downtime. When you are facing negative effects and the high cost of downtime, your fleet company should be proactive about preventing the downtime just by implementing preventive measures & creating contingency plans. We have outlined the proactive steps that will help your commercial fleet avoid vehicle downtime and stay productive. 

Reasons behind downtime 

When it comes to vehicle downtime, you might consider only the maintenance issues and the accidents. However, several factors might keep your vehicle grounded – Due to bad weather, vehicle booting, and traffic, the productivity of your fleet will also be affected. So, ensure to consider all these factors and reduce your fleet vehicle downtime. 

Keep up with Preventive Maintenance 

One of the significant steps to avoid your fleet downtime is to perform preventive maintenance. Regular preventive maintenance can help to avoid expensive repairs down the road. Also, it allows you to identify your fleet performance issues and reduces your potential vehicle downtime.  

Therefore, scheduling downtime for vehicle maintenance lets your fleet business prepare in advance & set repairs during slow days. 

Conduct Regular Inspections 

Vehicles are important assets in fleet businesses. Wherein, you can expect a top-notch performance from your fleet only when you maintain and service the vehicles regularly.  

Preventive maintenance programs allow you to take care of major issues and prevent vehicles from turning into major ones. As mentioned above, regular vehicle inspection helps you to eliminate vehicle downtime & unscheduled maintenance. By giving proper attention to the vehicle’s condition & its maintenance, your employees would remain safe and happy. 

Thus, the probability of emergency repairs and unplanned vehicle downtime could have a big impact on system efficiency and customer experience. 

Choose the right vehicle 

The choice of your vehicle must correlate with the purpose you’re using it. The vehicle you select will determine how often you can experience vehicle downtime. So, ensure to select the right vehicle that is specially built based on your business. 

Purchasing a new vehicle ensures that they won’t have any pesky maintenance problems that come up as a vehicle age over time. But older vehicles are bound to have some performance issues and, therefore, it costs a lot for repair and more frequent repair schedules. 

To avoid this problem, you can rent a vehicle from a trusted fleet company. By renting a vehicle from a commercial fleet company, you can easily replace the rented vehicle without worrying about downtime. It saves you money in repair costs & downtime in the long run. 

Encourage safe driving 

Accidents are the major cause of unplanned downtime for fleet companies. Over 20% of fleet downtime results in accidents; since some accidents are unavoidable on the road. You can reduce your downtime by following preventive maintenance and managing the driving behavior of your fleet drivers.  

You can monitor your driver’s driving behavior using a vehicle tracking system like Telematics. This technology also helps you identify the vehicle speed, heavy braking, sudden stops, and other concerning actions. 

Certain driver behavior like harsh braking, speeding, and rapid acceleration could cause unnecessary issues in the vehicle. To avoid this, use telematics software to track your driver’s behavior.  

When you notice any unsafe or aggressive driving behavior, you can coach or train them to know how to treat the vehicles well. Therefore, it benefits both the driver and fleet company to prevent potential downtime. 

Conclusion

Decreasing fleet downtime is necessary if you want to run an efficient & effective fleet. These steps will help you to cut down the cost and repercussions significantly. In addition, to minimize your vehicle downtime, ensure to lease or rent a vehicle.  

Fraikindayim is a Commercial fleet rental and leasing company in Saudi Arabia. To lease or rent the right vehicle for your business, contact Fraikindayim. We perform frequent vehicle inspections and conduct preventative maintenance that keeps the vehicles in top-performing shape at all times.