Truck Maintenance | Plan, Schedule, Track, & Repeat

In the trucking industry, maintenance is a huge expense for owner-operators. It is also one area where cost can be reduced if continually planned, scheduled, and tracked. And we’re not talking reducing a few bucks, with proper maintenance management, you can keep thousands of dollars from leaving your pocket. TruckLogics has a complete maintenance management feature and we’re going to discuss that in just a second, but let’s go over a few things first.

Trucking Infographics by TruckersReport

How do you reduce cost by managing maintenance?

You would think the answer would be pretty cut and dry, but there really is a bit more to it. You deal with truck maintenance on a monthly basis and that even includes cleaning. When you’re planning out your maintenance and tracking everything you see where your money is going. You can look for areas where you can cut cost, negotiate different prices (never hurts to try), and know what months you spend the most on maintenance. If you take a look at your maintenance expenses for the past three months, you will be able to see where you can cut cost and make more money the next quarter. Examine your maintenance history and you will be able to clearly see where you can cut cost. 

Tires are one maintenance expense to really track

Calculating how much you spend on tires probably raises the blood pressure just a touch. It’s a crazy number, but you can bring the amount down. Just like we were explaining a second ago, you need to examine your maintenance history, and look at how much you spend on tires each month and the time you were purchasing them. You will most likely see a pattern and you can actually determine if you need to try different tires, change up routes, change the rotation schedule, or anything else that would cut cost. Tires are going to be one of the main expenses you need to keep a good control on, and you can easily do that with TruckLogics. Every maintenance expense can be planned, scheduled, and tracked in TruckLogics with reports to help you examine the data. 

Using TruckLogics to Manage Your Maintenance

Plan – Every regular maintenance expense needs to be planned out ahead of time so you know what the cost will be. From this information, you will be able to plan your loads better and pick loads that will bring in enough revenue to cover expenses and generate more cash flow. 

Schedule – You can create a custom maintenance schedule based on your truck, or fleet’s, requirements. When scheduling your maintenance you want to really take into account where you will be and how long it takes to perform the maintenance that needs to be done. With TruckLogics, you can schedule maintenance based on mileage or time period. This information is going to help you reduce costs and plan out your loads. 

Track – TruckLogics will track all your expenses for you. All you do is input the information and TruckLogics does the rest. You can run reports for any date range and for any truck you need to see the maintenance records for. These reports are great to pinpoint which trucks or what expenses are costing you the most so you can make changes and increase your profits. 

Find out more management tips with the TruckLogics crew on our Business Management Breakdown series. The lastest blog – Zen and the Art of Expense Tracking – goes over some important topics in a creative way. 

We have a podcast too! Episode 25. Expense Tracking & The I-77 Toll Road Debate updates you on important news and events with a good health and wellness discussion at the end. 

Have questions? Great! The TruckLogics crew would love to hear from you and answer any questions you may have. You can even schedule a personal one-on-one demo with us to see TruckLogics in action. Contact the TruckLogics crew via phone: 704-234-6946 or email: [email protected].