Running a small fleet (around 10–20 vehicles), I realized that keeping track of inspections, compliance deadlines, and inventory was more complicated than I expected. At first, I relied on spreadsheets and manual reminders, but that approach quickly became error-prone and time-consuming.

A few insights from my journey:

Preventive maintenance always ends up saving more than reactive fixes.

A clear inspection workflow directly reduces downtime.

Inventory visibility is critical when multiple vehicles share the same parts.

Automated alerts help avoid missed compliance requirements.

I eventually switched to a structured platform. Lately, I’ve been using Fleetrabbit (fleetrabbit.com), which offers inspection scheduling, GPS/fuel card integration, and an analytics dashboard. It simplified my day-to-day operations significantly.

I’d love to hear how others in this space are handling it:

Which tool or process do you depend on most for fleet management?

How do you balance cost vs functionality when choosing a tool?

Do you track everything in-house, or outsource parts of maintenance/compliance?

Looking forward to learning from your experiences!

Dev Smith Fleet Manager