Tuesday, the ride-on will not start
Crew B arrives at the business park at half seven and the ride-on will not start. Someone thinks it was playing up last week but nobody wrote it down. The spare is on another van at the other side of town. By the time it arrives the morning has gone and the site will not be finished today.
Back at the yard, the mechanic, who is also the Thursday crew leader, has a notebook with service dates for the big machines, some of the time. The strimmers, blowers and hedge cutters are anyone's guess.
Why servicing slips
Landscaping kit takes a pounding in the growing season and moves constantly. A hedge cutter might be on three vans in a fortnight. Servicing intervals are usually by hours of use, but hours are not recorded. And faults are reported verbally, if at all, to whoever is around.
- There is no single list of every machine the business owns.
- Hours of use are not recorded, so intervals by hours cannot be followed.
- Faults are mentioned in passing and forgotten.
- Kit moves between vans without anyone recording where it went.
- The workshop has no queue, so servicing happens when a machine breaks.
Servicing and inspection records may also form part of your wider health and safety records, for example around vibration exposure or guards. What those records need to contain is for your own adviser to set. The system's job is to hold them.
What breakdowns cost in season
A broken machine on site costs crew time, a rushed trip with a spare, and sometimes a site left half done and a client call. Repairs done in a panic cost more than planned servicing, and machines that are never serviced wear out sooner. The office also spends time finding out where a particular machine is, and buys duplicates of kit that is actually sitting in another van.
The equipment register we build
- Every machine gets a record and a weatherproof QR tag: make, model, serial number, purchase date, and the servicing intervals you set, by hours, by date or both.
- Crews scan the tag at the start of the day to record which van and job the machine is with, and log rough hours at the end.
- Faults are reported by scanning the tag and choosing from a short list, with a photo if useful. A serious fault marks the machine as not to be used until the workshop clears it.
- Servicing comes due automatically from hours or date, and the workshop sees one queue: faults, due services and overdue services, by van.
- Each service or repair is logged against the machine with parts used, so the full history is kept.
- The owner can see total repair costs per machine, which helps decide when to replace rather than repair.
| Kit | Typical record held |
|---|---|
| Ride-on and pedestrian mowers | Hours, blade changes, services, faults |
| Strimmers and brushcutters | Van, hours, services, faults |
| Hedge cutters | Van, services, faults |
| Blowers | Van, services, faults |
| Plate compactors and mixers | Job, services, faults |
A workshop that plans instead of rescues
The mechanic starts each week with a list rather than a surprise. Crews report faults in seconds, and a fault reported on Monday is fixed before it becomes a breakdown on Thursday. The office knows where every machine is. And when you are deciding whether to replace the old ride-on, you have its repair history in front of you rather than a vague sense that it is always in the workshop.
Is your kit on borrowed time?
- Machines have broken on site with faults that were known about.
- Nobody records hours of use.
- Service history is in a notebook, or not kept at all.
- You have bought kit you already had because nobody knew where it was.
- Servicing happens when something breaks.