You bought them together. They break down together.
Every fleet has a week like the one below — a batch commissioned in the same month, coming due in the same fortnight, four years running. Nobody plans for it because nobody can see it coming.
The next 12 weeks
Projected from each vehicle's own usage, not a fleet-wide average. Set the workshop capacity and see whether it holds.
- Vehicles
- 66
- Due in 12 weeks
- 52
- Busiest week
- 14
- Still waiting at week 12
- 18
At 3 a week, 18 vehicles are still waiting at week 12 and running past their interval. The queue never clears, because the backlog from the peak carries forward faster than the quiet weeks can absorb it.
Week 4 brings 14 services. That is the number a workshop has to be sized against — and the number nobody knows until the vehicles start arriving.
Distance is the wrong interval for half the fleet
An excavator covers almost no ground and works its engine hard. A site pickup does neither and still ages. Serviced on odometer alone, one gets wrecked and the other gets serviced for nothing.
| Vehicle | By distance | By hours | By date | Fires first |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TRK-150 Tractor unit | 6d | 13d | 269d | Distance · 7d before the next |
| VAN-150 Panel van | 8d | 13d | 235d | Distance · 5d before the next |
| EXC-115 Excavator | 4586d | 17d | 263d | Engine hours · 246d before the next |
| GEN-115 Generator | — | 18d | 258d | Engine hours · 240d before the next |
| PLT-115 Site pickup | 570d | 415d | 53d | Elapsed time · 361d before the next |
| REF-150 Reefer rigid | 39d | 5d | 274d | Engine hours · 34d before the next |
The margin column is how much slack a fixed interval would have thrown away — or overrun. Service the excavator on distance and it runs hundreds of days past the hours it should have been done at.
The same repair, 10 times the price
Nothing about a roadside failure is technically harder than the service that would have prevented it. It costs more because of where it happens, when it happens, and what else stops while it is happening.
Driver inspections catch it earlier still- Scheduled service 1,850
Booked in, parts on the shelf, vehicle back the same day.
- Roadside recovery 4,200
Recovery vehicle, often out of hours, often a long way from anywhere.
- Emergency repair 6,500
Parts sourced at short notice, labour at premium rates.
- Vehicle off road, 3 days 5,400
Revenue the vehicle did not earn while it sat at a third-party garage.
- Missed deliveries 3,100
Re-planned drops, penalty clauses, and the customer who remembers.
SAR, one vehicle, one failure. Against 1,850 for the service that would have prevented it.
The engine says so before the driver does
Fault codes are on the bus for days or weeks before anything becomes drivable-but-wrong. Read on every trip, not on the next visit.
Only where the unit can reach the bus — the OBD and Advanced devices. The wired unit reports position and ignition, and will not invent a diagnosis it cannot see.
Read off the engine bus long before it becomes a derate on a hill outside Taif.
A regeneration problem is cheap now and an engine-out job later.
Injector trouble announces itself on the bus before the driver notices anything.
Small part, quick fix, and an ABS fault is not something to discover in August traffic.
The rest of the platform
Live tracking
Position, speed and ignition every ten seconds.
Routing and dispatch
Plan the day, send it to the driver's phone.
Asset and trailer tracking
Trailers, generators, plant and containers.
AI dashcam
Road and cabin, clipped to the event.
Driver behaviour
Scored per driver and per trip.
Incident centre
Footage, telemetry and witnesses in one file.