What's The Best Fleet Maintenance Software?

Adding technology is one of the first things motor vehicle carriers can do to improve as they ascend from a good company to a great company. Technology, and software specifically, is designed to streamline your operation, ultimately saving you time and money. 

In trucking, fleet maintenance software is a no-brainer when you go from a small fleet to a medium or large fleet. It’s one thing to manually track maintenance schedules, repairs and more when you have just one or two trucks; it’s another thing when your company has scaled up to dozens of vehicles and drivers.

What is fleet maintenance software?

Fleet maintenance software is simply a technology platform designed to help fleet owners track aspects of their vehicle maintenance, such as mileage, repairs, inspections, parts inventory and more. Having all this data at your fingertips helps you reduce costly downtime and understand your overall and per-vehicle costs as your fleet ages — information that may drive decisions about the length of your trade cycle and other important factors. 

How costly is fleet maintenance?

You can’t ignore the costs associated with maintaining a fleet. According to “An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2024 Update” from the American Transportation Research Institute, fleet repair and maintenance costs equate to about $0.202 per mile, while tire costs are $0.046, for a total of about $0.25 per mile. These costs are approximately 10 percent of the total marginal cost of operating a truck in 2023 ($2.270 per mile). And that’s not including the cost of downtime. 

Certainly, anything you can do to reduce repair and maintenance costs and increase uptime is good for your bottom line. Understanding your costs by benchmarking them against others in the industry, using a study like ATRI’s, is a good place to start. If you’re over indexing on some of these costs, fleet maintenance software may be your answer.

How do I set up a fleet maintenance program?

A good place to start when identifying your fleet maintenance program options is to look at your existing vendor partnerships to see if they offer fleet maintenance software. 

You also may want to connect with a transportation safety consultant, such as LEC Safety, to help you narrow down your choices and set up your program.  

Ultimately, your top considerations are going to be cost, integrations with current platforms and ease of use. 

What is the best fleet management software to choose?

Every fleet is unique, so what works for others may not necessarily work for you. It’s best to do your due diligence to determine which fleet management software will keep your trucks rolling and give you the best return on your investment. 

There are essentially three types of fleet maintenance software for motor vehicle carriers to choose from: 

1. Truck manufacturer-based fleet maintenance software
2. Third-party service provider-based fleet maintenance software, such as those included with fleet management software
3. Stand-alone fleet maintenance software

Truck manufacturer-based fleet maintenance software

Detroit Diesel’s Detriot Connect: Detroit Connect is more than data. It’s the power to make quicker decisions, simplify maintenance and take your business farther.

Freightliner’s Pinnacle Fleet Solutions: With parts, services, billing and support for small, regional and national fleets, Pinnacle Fleet Solutions delivers peak technology for fleet maintenance.

PACCAR Parts Fleet Services: The program maximizes uptime for fleets of all sizes, allowing them to quickly and easily streamline daily operations with consistent national pricing, centralized billing and network support. 

Third-party service provider-based fleet maintenance software

Samsara’s Fleet Maintenance: Samsara’s maintenance solution can help you streamline your fleet vehicle maintenance by offering real-time visibility into vehicle diagnostics, streamlining maintenance workflows and more. 

Trimble’s TMT Fleet Maintenance: TMT Fleet Maintenance is designed to streamline all of your company's maintenance operations to keep your trucks on the road for longer. 

Stand-alone fleet maintenance software

AMCS Fleet Maintenance: Formerly Dossier, this platform automates fleet operations and reduces fleet maintenance costs through preventive maintenance.

Fleetio: Manage inspections, work orders, preventive maintenance schedules, parts inventory and more in a single dashboard with Fleetio.

While AvatarFleet's software doesn't natively integrate with fleet maintenance software, the act of purchasing this software often accompanies the roadmap fleets use when instituting organizational change, like driver recruiting, compliance and safety software and programs. 

AvatarFleet's products and services fit nicely into the ecosystem of platforms a fleet will need along their journey from good to great.