Every hire and fleet business will be fully aware of the impact of regular maintenance to get their vehicles, welfare cabins and other hired equipment out on the road and making money.
However, alongside short term inconvenience and missed revenue, there are further long-term repercussions associated with poor maintenance routines that can vastly affect your business.
As a thriving business, your objective is to deliver all that your clients or customers request in a particular timeframe. Poor maintenance not only puts employees and the public at risk, it also leaves you open to the risk of costly emergency repairs which can take equipment off the road for any length of time.
Unfortunately, this can trigger a negative response from stakeholders and customers linked to their perception of your company. It can only take one occurrence for someone to form a poor opinion, the implications of which can spread far and wide. The only way to help prevent this from happening is by undertaking regular proactive maintenance checks and preventing unnecessary downtime before it happens.
There’s a significant difference between planned downtime and unplanned downtime. Planned downtime usually occurs when vehicles are undergoing work or maintenance with additional measures put in place to fulfil customer needs. Often, scheduled maintenance is undergone out of hours to minimally disrupt the business.
Unplanned downtime can literally put a stop to business which is severely costly.
Fleet News stated that the average cost of an unavailable vehicle is in the region of £3,000 to £4,000 a day. This figure considers not just the downtime of the vehicle itself, but also the longer-term cost to the business with regard to repeat orders and customer spend.
Emergency repairs are costly. Naturally, they can’t always be helped (with all the goodwill in the world!) but regular maintenance checks can certainly keep them to a minimum. By ensuring that you have the necessary replacement parts in your workshop, you can keep vehicles in peak condition and get them back on the road in minimal time. If you can’t keep a stock of commonly replaced parts, you can still minimise your downtime with TRAILPARTS® delivering to your door within 24 hours of your order using our FREE NEXT DAY DELIVERY - We’ll ship your order to you FOC on all orders over £150!
When a vehicle is taken off the road unexpectedly, it is your brand that takes the hit. If you are unable to fulfil your service, it’s highly likely that you won’t be called on again, and over time this can have a profound impact on future orders.
Equally, recurrent downtime can create an unpleasant working environment for your team. If vehicles or equipment are grounded, productivity can quickly dissipate. In time, this can lead to significant frustration and be a sufficient reason for seeking alternative employment.
A poor reputation will also do little to entice new recruits to your business, so you could be looking at a severe knock-on effect!
The key to successful fleet maintenance is to utilise a proactive approach. If you work with reactive maintenance and do not implement a regular maintenance schedule, it’s highly likely that you’ll suffer the consequences of unexpected downtime.
While it can be challenging to plan fleet maintenance when assets are heavily relied on, it’s vital that you do so for both driver safety and minimal downtime. The quicker you can identify a problem, the quicker you can order the appropriate replacement parts from a consolidated supplier and ensure that they’re always available to you.
If you’d like more information on regular maintenance checks, take a look at our article.
As consolidated suppliers of replacement vehicle parts, our objective is to always keep your fleet on the road.
TRAILPARTS® keeps a huge selection of the most common replacement and spare parts from both well-known brands and other high-quality alternatives. We have some 150,000 parts on our shelves! With the vast majority of these available on our website, conveniently arranged by category to make finding the right part simple.
If you can’t find what you’re looking for, or need some guidance on compatibility, our team are always on hand at the end of the phone to make sure you track down what you need to keep your business moving.
Read our blog- “Keep your fleet on the road with regular maintenance checks” for more top tips on finding the right parts and what to look out for when implementing an effective pro-active maintenance routine.
