An expert’s view of the Top 3 maintenance pain points

The workdays of fleet maintenance managers are riddled with exceptions, from running out of parts inventory to managing roadside breakdowns and other unexpected events.

Exceptions that repeat themselves too often become industry-wide pain points.

Looking through a 35-year experiential lens, Bruce Stockton sees three maintenance pain points that have all been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stockton is director of maintenance at Paul Transportation, a Tulsa, OK-based flatbed carrier with 200 trucks, and a fleet consultant as the principal of Stockton Solutions.

1.    Keeping in-house talent on par with dealerships
The complexity of today’s vehicles and engines can baffle even the most experienced fleet maintenance executives and technicians, particularly challenges related to emission aftertreatment systems.

The complexity of vehicle and engine repairs are causing fleets to outsource more repair work, which is driving up costs.Complexity of repairs make it difficult for fleet shops to keep technician skills on par with dealerships. Fleets generally do not have technicians work on the most difficult types of repairs on a daily basis, unlike dealerships. This creates an imbalance of work for technicians that negatively impacts the level of training and experience that fleets can provide, Stockton said.

Dealers also have difficulties keeping up with the complexity of repairs, and in many cases fleets end up paying as much, if not more, to get a proper diagnosis for a repair than what it actually costs for parts and labor. At times this can make repair costs almost unbearable, he said.