Your fleet is missing out on the benefits of outsourced fleet maintenance by keeping everything in-house.
Outsourcing fleet maintenance doesn’t mean you have to outsource your entire maintenance process. Some fleets choose to use a combination of in-house and outsourced maintenance to realize the benefits of both.
There are some major advantages of outsourcing fleet maintenance. Let's dive in:
Save money
Working with a maintenance provider unleashes hard and soft cost savings.
Maintenance shops compete against one another to win your business, which includes optimizing costs. You can review your contracts as they come up for renewal to select the most cost effective deal. Fleets typically save 10 percent to 25 percent through privatization.
You can also access even lower costs on maintenance tasks by leveraging regional and national providers’ buying power to score deals on items like vehicle parts. With access to maintenance providers’ greater resources, your fleet can benefit and increase cost savings.
Increase efficiency
The more time your fleet vehicles can spend on the road, the better. So, when conducting routine maintenance, it’s ideal to schedule it outside of operating hours to avoid downtime.
While you can do this with an in-house maintenance shop, it’s a greater headache. It would mean keeping your mechanics after hours and either paying for overtime or increasing your staff size.
Many maintenance shops, however, offer longer shop hours or hours outside of normal business hours. Your fleet can take advantage of this to keep your vehicles on the road as much as possible without managing the logistics and costs yourself.
Maintenance providers also typically offer multiple locations. In the event of a vehicle breakdown, you may likely be able to reach a shop location faster than your in-house maintenance shop, further reducing downtime.
Additionally, another benefit national service providers offer is consolidated billing—single, monthly invoices with all of your shop charges. Instead of processing an invoice every time a vehicle visits the shop, you can process one comprehensive invoice at the end of the month. This saves your fleet significant time and headache on the accounting side and allows you to concentrate greater resources on other items like fleet operations or your core business.
Boost flexibility
With maintenance comes unavoidable peaks and valleys in the amount of repairs required. As you go through these transitions, it can be difficult to feel correctly staffed for in-house maintenance—you may often feel over- or understaffed.
Outsourced fleet maintenance, however, can support this flux in maintenance work easily. When your vehicles are requiring more work, you can simply bring them into the shop. This provides greater flexibility for your fleet.
Tap into mechanics’ expertise
Your fleet may occasionally run into technical challenges where you need repairs that require a specialized mechanic, such as an engine rebuild or tire capping. This can be difficult when operating entirely on in-house talent since specialized mechanics are more expensive and difficult to find.
Maintenance providers are more likely to staff mechanics with specialized skills that can address your fleet needs. With outsourced maintenance, you can tap into their knowledge as needed without worrying to try to find one on-demand.
Additionally, with outsourced fleet maintenance, shops keep up with mechanic trainings and certifications. You can save time and money without needing to take time to train staff or pay to update certifications.
Keep up with the latest and greatest
In-house maintenance shops are a high initial investment in the tools and shop itself, so you may not have the capacity to update it consistently.
Maintenance providers, however, are competing with one another for your business. They are trying to surpass one another in all categories, including shops’ bells and whistles. As a result, you can usually expect the latest shop technology.
Reduce risk
When operating your own maintenance shop, you open yourself up to risks for your vehicles, drivers and technicians. When you outsource maintenance, you get to offload this risk to the maintenance provider.
