A Fleet Management Service is a company whose purpose is to help businesses with fleet vehicles manage acquisition, maintenance, and repair of their fleet. These management services generally have a network of dealers, mechanics, oil change and tire shops etc. that they use to take care of their customers’ vehicles. However, if your company works with one of these organizations, we will almost surely not be able to work with you. There are a few factors that we consider here:
- Does the fleet management service have a practical approval process? We are generally on a particular project for 30 minutes- 2 hours then we go to the next scheduled job. If we find something that needs attention, but we have to call the fleet management company to get approval, then they have to call you, the customer, to make sure it is ok with you, then they call us back to give us the go ahead, it can double the time we are on your project. The unpredictable nature of this exchange makes this relationship impractical.
- Does the fleet management service pay-out in a timely manner? Although many pay their invoices in a timely manner, many do not. One fleet management service we worked with years ago took 89 days to pay us. We require payment in 10 days maximum. This obviously put a strain on the relationship.
- Will the fleet management service listen to the people on the ground? Many times, we have found issues that need immediate attention when working on vehicles. If these issues are not addressed, costly repairs will be required later. When we bring these issues to the attention of many fleet management companies, they question the legitimacy of our observations. In some cases, in a degrading and accusatory manner. This makes serving you well very difficult.
- Does the fleet management service allow you to use our 15,000 mile/ 1 year oil change? Most of these companies have never heard of such a thing as an oil change that lasts as long as ours. When they first hear of it, they can be very resistant even when you as the customer tell them it is what you want to do. In their rigid system, they are extremely hesitant to approve such a service. These fleet services tend to create a lot of resistance in our billing process when this happens, so, in this case, we will refuse service.
If any one of these items has any potential to happen, we simply choose to pass. At Rogers Mobile Lube & Tire, we serve local people we get to know personally who we can build a relationship with. If you would like to use our services, we would love to help you, but please don’t bring the middleman.
See our blog post on our Fleet Tracking Software.
Authored by Riley Rogers