BY VICTORIA KICKHAM, SENIOR EDITOR
FLEET MANAGEMENT
Technology
USING TECHNOLOGY FIRST APPLIED IN ITS WAREHOUSE, PENSKE TRUCK
Leasing is streamlining its preventive maintenance inspection process by going paper-less—a feat the company says is delivering big improvements in productivity, quality,
and equipment uptime.
The transportation and logistics services provider is applying voice-directed technology to the preventive maintenance inspection process across its fleet of nearly 300,000
trucks, eliminating the manual, largely paper-based process its technicians traditionally
used. Today, Penske technicians have traded clipboards and laptops for headsets and
software that converts spoken information to text that is communicated directly into the
company’s data system. Going digital has allowed Penske to improve inspection efficiency—cutting a two-hour inspection down to an hour and a half in some cases—and has
dramatically reduced the number of customer shop visits for service. Gregg Mangione,
Penske Truck Leasing’s senior vice president of maintenance, says the company is seeing
about 60,000 fewer shop visits annually since implementing the system in 2017.
“[That’s a] tremendous benefit for our customers,” Mangione explains, noting that
the less time a vehicle spends in the service bay, the more time it spends in service for
the customer.
The system is yielding big benefits internally as well. Mangione says it streamlines
technicians’ jobs, saving time, improving the quality and accuracy of their work, and
Penske Truck Leasing
has replaced its
manual vehicle
inspection process
with voice-directed
technology that
is improving fleet
inspection and repair
accuracy, while
delivering more
uptime to customers.
Fleet maintenance
goes digital
