With changes taking place in technology and regulations for trucks and the trucking industry, keeping up with your maintenance practices can be daunting.
Whatever your core business may be, transporting your product to its destination is essential for your business’s success. But maintaining a fleet can be quite costly in today’s world. Jane Clark addresses this issue in her recent IdeaXchange blog, In fact, according to the American Transportation Research Institute, 10 percent of your business costs can be attributed to maintenance and repair.
She notes that the complexity of today’s truck technology means more expensive components, a need for more technicians qualified in new technology, constant technician retraining, and the pressure of compliance with new and changing regulations.
For these reasons, companies may decide to outsource their fleet maintenance to a third-party provider. But Jane warns that you need to do your due diligence when selecting a partner. You need a partner with a great deal of experience in service relationship management, one that provides: the technology that will allow data to flow between the service provider and the fleet; in-context communication at the point of service; and consistency across their entire network.
Some companies may feel it is important to keep maintenance in-house, but before you disregard the suggestion of outsourcing maintenance, you should calculate your costs, including personnel, equipment, real estate, component inventory, and the plethora of other issues in-house maintenance may entail
For specific capabilities you should look for in a third-party provider, read Jane’s full blog.
