Fleet Maintenance Tracking: How to Stop Firefighting and Start Planning

If you're running a fleet, you already know the drill. A driver calls in with a warning light. The office scrambles to find when the vehicle was last serviced. Someone digs through a filing cabinet while someone else checks a spreadsheet that hasn't been updated since March.

Meanwhile, the vehicle sits. The delivery is late. The customer is annoyed.

I spent 10 years at Thales and Hitachi Rail watching this pattern repeat across every transport operation I worked with. The specific vehicles change — buses, trucks, coaches, rail cars — but the chaos is always the same.

Here's what I've learned about breaking the cycle.

Why Most Fleet Maintenance Is Reactive

The reality is uncomfortable: most transport operators run 70-80% reactive maintenance. That means seven out of ten jobs happen because something already broke.

This isn't because fleet managers are bad at their jobs. It's because the tools they're given set them up to fail.

The typical setup:

Vehicle service records in a filing cabinet
MOT dates in a spreadsheet (maybe)
Driver defect reports on paper forms that get lost
Parts inventory tracked in someone's head

With this setup, reactive is the only option. You can't prevent problems you can't see coming.

What Good Fleet Maintenance Tracking Actually Looks Like

The goal isn't perfection. It's visibility.

You need to answer three questions without scrambling:

What's due soon? — MOTs, services, inspections, tyre changes
What broke recently? — Recurring defects, problem vehicles, patterns
What's the history? — When someone asks "when did we last service that vehicle?", you need an answer in seconds

That's it. If you can answer those three questions consistently, you're ahead of 80% of fleet operators.

The Spreadsheet Problem

I'm not going to tell you spreadsheets are useless. They're not. I've seen fleets of 50+ vehicles run on Excel for years.

But spreadsheets have a failure point, and if you run a fleet, you've probably hit it:

Nobody updates them.

The spreadsheet starts clean. Column A is the reg number, Column B is the MOT date, Column C is the last service. Beautiful.

Six months later, half the dates are wrong because the person who did the service forgot to update the sheet. Or they updated their copy, not the shared one. Or they meant to update it Monday but it's now Thursday.

Spreadsheets don't remind you. They don't chase people. They just sit there, slowly becoming fiction.

What to Track (And What to Skip)

If you're setting up fleet maintenance tracking — whether in a spreadsheet or proper software — start with these:

Must-Have

| Data Point | Why It Matters | |------------|----------------| | MOT expiry date | Legal requirement. Miss it, vehicle is off the road. | | Service intervals | Manufacturer schedules. Keeps warranties valid. | | Driver defect reports | Early warning system. Catches issues before breakdowns. | | Maintenance history | Audit trail. Proves you did the work. |

Nice-to-Have (Add Later)

| Data Point | Why It Matters | |------------|----------------| | Parts used per job | Cost tracking. Spot expensive vehicles. | | Technician time | Labour costs. Identify inefficiencies. | | Fuel consumption | Fleet health indicator. Sudden changes flag problems. |

Skip (For Now)

Detailed telematics integration
Predictive analytics
Fancy dashboards nobody looks at

Start simple. Add complexity when you've proven the basics work.

The MOT Trap

Here's a scenario that plays out every week somewhere in the UK:

Fleet manager checks the MOT spreadsheet on Monday. Vehicle X is due Friday. No problem — plenty of time.

Except the booking isn't made until Wednesday. The garage is full until next Tuesday. Vehicle X is now legally undriveable, the driver is reassigned, and there's a gap in the schedule.

The fix: Automated reminders 30, 14, and 7 days before expiry. Not a calendar reminder that's easy to dismiss — a system that flags overdue items until they're dealt with.

This is the single biggest win for most fleet operators. It's boring. It's simple. And it prevents a disproportionate amount of chaos.

Driver Defect Reports: The Early Warning System

Your drivers are your eyes on the fleet. They notice the weird noise, the soft brake pedal, the warning light that flickers on cold starts.

But most defect reporting systems fail because they're annoying to use:

Paper forms get lost or thrown away
Complicated apps that take 10 minutes to submit a report
No feedback — drivers report issues that disappear into a void

A good defect reporting system is:

Fast — 30 seconds to report a problem
Visible — drivers see their reports were received
Actionable — reports automatically create work orders

When drivers trust the system, they report more. When they report more, you catch problems earlier.

When Spreadsheets Stop Working

Spreadsheets fail at a specific size. It's usually somewhere between 20-50 vehicles, depending on how complex your operation is.

Signs you've outgrown Excel:

Multiple people need to update the same sheet simultaneously
You've had compliance near-misses (MOTs, inspections)
Finding historical records takes more than 30 seconds
Your spreadsheet has multiple tabs that reference each other
You've lost data because someone overwrote the wrong cell

If you're seeing two or more of these, it's time to consider proper fleet maintenance software.

What to Look For in Fleet Maintenance Software

Not every CMMS is built for transport. Features that matter for fleet operators:

Essential:

Vehicle-centric asset tracking (reg numbers, VINs)
MOT and inspection date tracking with alerts
Mobile access for drivers and technicians
Work order management
Maintenance history per vehicle

Important:

Driver defect reporting (mobile)
Parts and inventory tracking
Integration with existing systems
O-licence compliance support

Nice-to-have:

Telematics integration
Fuel tracking
Route optimisation integration

Avoid systems built for factories or facilities that happen to have a "vehicle" option. They'll force you to adapt your workflow to their structure.

The Goal: Boring Consistency

The best fleet maintenance operation isn't exciting. It's predictable.

MOTs get done with two weeks to spare
Services happen on schedule
Defects get caught and fixed before they escalate
When an auditor asks for records, you pull a report

This isn't about sophisticated technology. It's about building habits and systems that make the right thing easier than the wrong thing.

Start with visibility. The rest follows.

Next Steps

If you're still on spreadsheets and want to see what proper fleet maintenance tracking looks like, we're building AssetOS specifically for this.

No enterprise pricing, no six-month implementation. Just work orders, compliance tracking, and maintenance history that actually stays up to date.

Join the beta — we're looking for fleet operators to help shape the product.