According to Wikipedia, “insuranceis a means of protection from financial loss.” It could be argued that fleet maintenance software is also a form of insurance, helping protect you from financial loss.
While Insurance protects your company, fleet, and drivers against accidents and liability claims, using fleet maintenance software to help maintain your fleet in accordance with equipment specifications helps protect the investment, including the cost of purchasing and the parts and labour spent maintaining it. A trained eye can easily spot neglected equipment at auction.
Plus, using fleet maintenance software helps protect you in terms of insurance and DOT compliance. When accidents occur, it’s not uncommon for the insurance company, DOT, and other authorities to request fleet maintenance records, or to perform audits. Having a proper fleet maintenance software system in place can help protect and save you and your staff from spending hours and even days piecing fleet maintenance records together and proving due diligence. This task can be an especially painful one if your fleet maintenance record keeping consists of a fleet maintenance spreadsheet, handwritten forms, and your accounting package.
Audits, especially insurance company audits, are becoming more and more frequent as the insurance industry reacts to the increased number of lawsuits in the United States related to driver and maintenance logging.
The insurance industry appears to be more focused on auditing smaller organizations, those that have between 25 and 250 pieces of equipment, and probably for good reason. There are an estimated 750,000 trucking companies in Canada and the U.S. Add Mexico and other industries such as construction and forestry, and private fleets, the number is staggering. This number is also why electronic logging legislation is back on the radar of lawmakers.
However, it is a common misconception that all electronic logging / satellite tracking systems handle fleet maintenance in accordance with insurance and DOT requirements. In fact, some providers of this technology don’t have a fleet maintenance software component at all. Others are not designed to make it easy to use, especially for small operators, or to be useful on the shop floor and back office.
We are not suggesting that these technologies don’t add value and have their place. They are great for what they are designed to do: a means of direct communication between the equipment and you. But, this technology is only part of the entire fleet management solution and it can only offer the protection for which it is used.
One thing is for certain: as our world becomes more and more integrated and networked, your insurance company and DOT will have increased reporting demands. Whether you use a fleet maintenance spreadsheet or Fleet Harmony Cloud Fleet management Software, the key to successfully keeping in compliance will be in keeping your fleet maintenance records current, organized, and complete.
Think Fleet Harmony can help you?
We have software solutions not only for fleet maintenance, but also shipment tracking, IFTA Reporting, and more/
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