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Rush's mobile services revenue has increased from 26% of the total service revenue stream to 35% in just a few years, the company said. (Rush Enterprises)

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The goal in fleet maintenance is to reduce downtime: a mile traveled for maintenance is a mile that doesn’t generate revenue for the fleet. For many companies, the aim is to bring miles traveled for maintenance to zero, maximizing uptime for the fleet operator.

“We did an analysis years ago. Even if a truck or a tractor only has to go two miles or three miles off site, it’s going to cost the customer a lot of money to do that; and then there’s downtime related to it,” Bob Brauer, chief commercial officer at , told Transport Topics. He noted the company has to send the vehicle due for maintenance to a brick-and-mortar garage, along with a “follow-car” and second employee to bring the driver back; and then repeat the process when the truck service is complete. It adds up, Brauer said, and that’s why the fleet maintenance firm saw the chance to establish itself in the mobile maintenance market.

Brauer said the company realized that 85% of its services, such as preventive maintenance, tire replacement and other common repairs, can be performed onsite in the customer’s yard.

“Getting it done quickly on site keeps the assets up. They keep compliant. They keep everything rolling and they keep the drivers happy,” he said. Some services require traditional, brick-and-mortar facilities — swapping an engine, for example, or complex transmission work — but routine maintenance, like oil changes, can be done anywhere.

Growth in the market segment has been rapid, especially in the last five or six years, Brauer said.

“Last-mile delivery to homes has created parking lots full of assets that need to deliver products to people’s houses,” he said. “Think about a company that wants to deliver food to restaurants. If they’re trying to hire 150 drivers in one location, it might be easier to spread that out closer to the restaurants. Companies just want to be closer to where their customers are. And you can’t have fleet shops everywhere.”

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(Amerit Fleet Solutions)

Balancing Workforce Efficiency

Mobile maintenance companies also schedule service around the fleet’s hours of operation, as much as possible. The service is designed to eliminate as much downtime as possible.

Mitchell Scates, director of mobile service at , told TT his company has seen revenue for the company’s mobile services increase from 26% of the total service revenue stream to 35% in just a few years. Part of the reason for that growth, he said, is how the company has designed its workforce. Many companies have trucks parked after 5 p.m. and on weekends. That’s when Rush technicians spring into action, traveling to the customers’ lots and working on trucks that are already sitting idle.

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“It’s just a benefit to the customer,” he said. “You’re not going to down your truck, we’re going to come to you when it’s already downed. Come Monday morning, when you’re ready to get on that route, it’s good to go and you can keep running with it.”

Brauer said Amerit Fleet Solutions tries to help fleets meet the goal of having at least 95% of their trucks up at any given time.

“That’s a real challenge,” he said, especially if fleets have to send trucks offsite for maintenance to dealerships or independent repair shops. “It’s just a lot easier to fix it onsite quickly, especially the minor repairs and preventative maintenance.”

Amerit also focuses on nighttime maintenance operations, something that might not be possible for independent shops with limited staffing, Brauer said.

“We work onsite at night. When their drivers go home, we show up, we work all night, we fix them,” he said. “There’s almost no downtime.”

Fleet operators must carefully evaluate the location setup when considering mobile maintenance services.

“There needs to be critical mass,” Brauer said. “If there’s just one vehicle on a parking lot, that’s probably not making sense to have an Amerit dedicated tech. But, we have some outdoor locations where there are 30 or 40 vehicles … others [have] several thousand outside.”

Joe Vatalaro, director of maintenance at , agreed on the importance of the relationship between mobile maintenance company and the customer. He said customers have to have a large enough fleet to justify the technicians’ drive time.

“For example, it would not be efficient to drive two hours to service a vehicle and two hours back, but if you scheduled three trucks instead of one, it would be more efficient,” he wrote in an email to TT.

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Vatalaro said mobile service customers do need to have big enough fleets to justify the technicians’ drive time. (PacLease)

Growing Staff and Service

Scates noted that, for example, the summer weather in central Texas, where Rush is headquartered, is brutal.

“We try to get [trucks] into a bay as much as possible, but sometimes it’s just not feasible,” he explained, adding on the other side of the climate scale, northern clients’ trucks must be serviced in cold conditions.

“It’s tough to get your hands moving and grooving,” Scates said, so the company provides block heaters and tries to find bays, again, on site when possible. “And, unfortunately there are days where we just have to say, we can’t do it today. If we’re in the middle of a blizzard, we’re going to have to reschedule — unless you have a bay for us to work in.”

Such disruptions to the schedule are the exception, he said, and the company is hoping to hire enough techs to increase its mobile workforce from 670 to about 1,000 by the end of 2027. The mobile service is an extra benefit for sales staff to push when selling new trucks, with inclusive onsite maintenance and warranty work packages available, Scates said.

Brauer said Amerit can tap into data about the trucks and in some cases, see what needs to be addressed on the vehicles before they arrive on site.

“We track repairs between preventative maintenance. We’ll look at a repair and say, ‘Gosh, we just did a PM on this vehicle. Why are we changing the tires? Or, why is there a brake issue?’ ” he said. “Then, we’re able to identify an issue with the vehicle based on the data that we’re looking at.”

In other cases, techs can look at driver complaints and determine issues in the truck that need to be repaired. Work orders are generated automatically, and electronic records show prompt repairs were made.

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(Amerit Fleet Solutions)

Scates said having mobile maintenance services can make it easier to stay on top of preventive maintenance.

“Most of the repair or failures we see stem from lack of maintenance,” he said. “Like your own car that you’re driving, if you don’t take care of it, it’s going to come back to bite you.”

Mobile maintenance services are also a way to address a very real shortage of qualified technicians across the country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects more than 25,000 diesel service and maintenance technician jobs come open every year.

“Technicians are hard to find,” Scates said, adding there are lots of companies competing in a shallow labor pool: customers who run their own repair shops, regional fleets, large dealership networks. That means smaller companies, those accustomed to performing maintenance in-house, are feeling the squeeze. “They’re starting to realize that it’s hard to maintain,” Scates said, making those companies the perfect customers for mobile services.

When choosing a mobile maintenance provider, it’s important to consider the network of service technicians a company has — and make sure the provider has good coverage and good quality standards.

“You cannot focus all your efforts on quantity and sacrifice quality of the onsite maintenance,” Vatalaro said. “Lower quality service will lead to an increase in breakdowns and downtime.”

He added that PacLease’s facilities are purpose-built to repair trucks with factory certified technicians, tooling, lighting, safety, supervision and parts inventory on site. Vatalaro noted that must be duplicated in a mobile maintenance program in order for it to be successful.

Amerit’s Brauer said fleets should consider the provider’s reach before signing up.

“Working with a national provider like us, you get standardized services, you get consistent data across all the locations,” he said, adding that independent shops use a variety of different systems and data points, and might not have full coverage for all of the systems on board a particular truck, or might not have the ability to access the systems in real-time in the field.

Using Technology

On-demand and mobile maintenance is also a good fit for repairs to electronic systems.

Deryk Powell, CEO of Velociti Inc., said his company takes care of systems that haven’t traditionally been the responsibility of diesel maintenance techs — systems like ELDs, onboard telematics, collision avoidance systems and dash cams.

Companies who adopt these technologies not only want the systems installed quickly and properly, he said, “then they need someone to monitor it and repair it out on the road. Because if, for example, you have a down ELD system, there’s a mandate to fix those within eight calendar days.”

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Velociti techs keep an eye on systems like tire pressure monitors, smart trailer systems, truck wings, dash cams and countless other networked components.

“We’re monitoring for any failure points with those systems,” Powell said. Failure points create flags in the system, and trouble tickets are routed to the closest company technician available to address the issue.

The technician then meets the driver in the field, or wherever it’s convenient – ideally, when the truck is down, anyway, he explained.

“That way we’re not causing them to do out-of-route miles. We’re not causing frustration on the driver’s part because he’d like to get on road and make more money per mile,” Powell said, noting that fleet operators are embracing new technology across the industry.

“Return on the investment that’s available from onboard technology is increasingly obvious,” he said, also noting that fleets understand that to make significant investments, the technology has to operate at maximum uptime. Maximum uptime, Powell said, is “99%.”