The wall planner in the transport office
Safety inspections, MOTs, tachograph calibrations, tail-lift examinations, fridge unit services. Each has its own interval, each truck and trailer has its own dates, and they are all on a year planner with coloured stickers, or a spreadsheet the fleet engineer updates when they remember.
On Thursday a planner puts a tractor unit on a three-day job to Scotland. Nobody spots that it was due in for its inspection on Friday. The workshop slot is wasted, the inspection slips, and the fleet engineer finds out on Monday.
Why the dates and the plan never meet
The maintenance schedule and the transport plan are kept by different people, in different places, for different reasons. The schedule is right; the plan is right; but nobody sees both at once.
- Due dates are on a wall chart or spreadsheet, not in the planning system.
- Trailers move between depots and customer sites, so booking them in is harder than booking trucks.
- Workshop or contractor slots are booked by phone and not linked to the vehicle record.
- Completed inspection sheets come back on paper and are filed separately.
- Different items (tail-lifts, fridges, calibrations) are tracked by different people.
What slipping dates cost
A missed slot means rebooking, often at short notice and at a less convenient time. A truck that goes over its interval may have to be taken off work until it is seen, which costs a load. Paperwork that does not show inspections happening when planned is something your transport manager will have to account for. And the fleet engineer spends time chasing rather than managing the fleet. The intervals themselves are for your transport manager and your operator licence undertakings, not for us.
The maintenance schedule we build
- Every truck and trailer is listed with its inspection types and the intervals your transport manager sets. Last completed dates are taken from your existing records.
- Due dates appear in the planning view, so a planner putting a vehicle on work can see it is due in, and choose another.
- Upcoming inspections are listed weeks ahead. The fleet engineer books them with your workshop or contractor, or sends a booking request from the system, and the slot is fixed to the vehicle.
- Planners are warned if they allocate a vehicle or trailer across a booked slot.
- When the inspection is done, the sheet is uploaded (a photo is fine) and the date recorded, which rolls the next due date forward.
- A report shows the status across the fleet: done, booked, due soon, overdue, with the paperwork attached.
| Job | Wall planner | Schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Knowing what is due | Stickers and memory | Listed ahead by type and vehicle |
| Planning around it | Planner does not see it | Shown and warned in the plan |
| Booking the workshop | Phone call, noted on paper | Slot held against the vehicle |
| Recording completion | Sheet in a file | Uploaded, next date rolls forward |
What changes for the fleet engineer
The fleet engineer manages a list rather than a wall. Planners route vehicles around their slots because they can see them. Trailers are pulled back to the depot in time, because the schedule flags them early. And when anyone asks to see maintenance records for a vehicle, they are on one page with the sheets attached.
If your workshop already runs fleet maintenance software, we connect to it rather than duplicate it, and put the due dates where the planners will see them.
Checklist
- Inspection dates live on a wall planner or spreadsheet.
- Vehicles have been planned onto work across a workshop slot.
- Trailers are hard to get back for inspections.
- Completed sheets are filed on paper only.
- Only the fleet engineer knows what is due.