Fleet Preventative Maintenance Compliance: Why Vehicles Fall Behind and How to Fix It

You’ve sent the PM reminder.

Then another one.

The department says they can’t spare the truck this week. Next week isn’t looking great either.

A month later, the truck finally shows up. Your tech starts the PM and finds tires, brakes, and a leak that needs attention.

Now you need the truck longer than expected.

And the department wants to know why fleet always keeps their vehicles forever.

Sound familiar?

This is one of the frustrating realities of preventative maintenance compliance. And it’s why chronic overdue PMs aren’t always a scheduling problem.

Sometimes, they’re a trust problem.

PM compliance measures whether scheduled preventative maintenance is completed within your fleet’s established service interval. Improving it requires visibility into upcoming maintenance, enough shop capacity to complete the work, access to the vehicles when they’re due, and clear accountability between fleet and the departments you serve.

Getting those pieces right helps break a cycle that can make PM compliance worse over time.

What is preventative maintenance compliance?

PM compliance is the percentage of scheduled preventative maintenance services completed within a fleet’s defined service interval.

Fleets may establish those intervals using mileage, engine hours, time, OEM recommendations, operating conditions, regulatory requirements, or some combination of them.

There isn’t one universal PM interval that works across every fleet.

FMCSA, for example, describes systematic maintenance for covered commercial motor vehicles as a regular or scheduled program and notes that maintenance intervals can be fleet-specific or vehicle-specific.

Whatever intervals you establish, the basic question behind PM compliance is simple: Are we servicing our assets when we said we would?

When the answer is consistently no, that percentage is telling you something.

The harder part is figuring out what.

Why do fleet vehicles become overdue for PM?

Ask around the shop and you’ll probably get plenty of answers.

• “They won’t bring me the truck.”

• “We don’t have enough techs.”

• “We’ve been waiting on parts.”

• “Nobody updated the meter.”

• “They missed their appointment again.”

• “We don’t have anything to give them while it’s down.”

Those aren’t excuses you can lump into one bucket. They’re different operational problems, and they need different fixes.

For most fleets, we’d start by looking at four things:

• Visibility: Did you know the PM was coming before the vehicle was already late?

• Capacity: Could your shop actually take the vehicle and complete the work?

• Access: Could the department give you the asset without creating a problem for its operation?

• Accountability: Did everyone know who was responsible for scheduling, surrendering, servicing, and following up on that PM?

When one of those breaks down, PM compliance can go with it.

When several break down at once, you get the cycle a lot of fleet managers know all too well.

The PM compliance vicious cycle

Here’s how it happens: Late PM → More accumulated work → Longer shop visit → Lower stakeholder trust → More resistance to the next PM → Later PM

The operator needs the vehicle, so they push the PM.

Maybe it’s only a few days at first.

Then a week.

Then a couple of weeks.

While the vehicle stays in service, you’ve lost the opportunity to get it into the shop, inspect it, and take care of anything else that needs attention.

Eventually, you get the keys.

Now your tech has the scheduled PM plus whatever else has accumulated.

Maybe there’s a tire issue.

Maybe the brakes are getting close.

Maybe there’s an old service request nobody connected to the PM.

Maybe there’s deferred work you wanted to handle the next time the vehicle came through.

Suddenly, the two-hour shop visit isn’t two hours anymore.

The department gets frustrated.

The next PM reminder arrives a few months later.

Guess how excited they are to give you the vehicle.

Marc Canton described this exact problem on The Fleet Success Show. He’d talk with vehicle users who didn’t want to bring an asset in because they believed fleet would keep it for weeks. Then he’d talk with the fleet team and learn that the same vehicle was months overdue for PM and now needed far more work than it would’ve needed if it had come in on time.

Both sides are frustrated.

Both sides think the other one caused the problem.

And the PM gets later the next time around.

PM compliance can tell you something about stakeholder trust

If you’re constantly chasing departments for vehicles, it’s worth asking why.

Yes, some people will ignore every reminder you send them.

Every fleet manager has met that person.

But if PM compliance is a recurring problem across departments, there may be more going on.

• Do your stakeholders know how long a typical PM takes?

• Do you usually hit that estimate?

• Can they see when their vehicle is ready?

• Do you communicate when you find additional work?

• Do they have access to a loaner or motor pool vehicle?

• Have they had vehicles sit at fleet waiting for somebody to start working on them?

• Do they understand what happens when they keep pushing PM?

Those experiences shape behavior.

There’s another side to it, too.

Your technicians and service staff remember when someone says, “I absolutely need this vehicle back by 3.”

They rearrange work. They push to get it done.

Then the vehicle sits outside the shop for two days because nobody comes to pick it up.

Drew Morrow raised that exact scenario during the podcast. Do it often enough and it changes the relationship between the shop and its stakeholders.

Trust has to work both ways.

How do you improve fleet PM compliance?

There isn’t one magic PM compliance fix.

You need to figure out where your process is breaking.

Know what’s coming before it becomes overdue

At 7:30 Monday morning, you should be able to see which assets are approaching PM, which are due, which are scheduled, and which are already late.

If you can’t, start there.

Your team needs enough lead time to coordinate with departments and plan shop capacity.

Accurate meter data matters here, too.

If PMs are triggered by mileage or engine hours and those numbers aren’t current, you’re starting with bad information.

Whether that data comes from telematics, fuel transactions, manual readings, or another source, somebody needs to trust it.

A PM shouldn’t surprise the fleet manager.

Find out why the vehicle isn’t coming in

This sounds obvious, but it’s easy to look at an overdue PM report and stop at:

“They didn’t bring it.”

Okay.

Why?

Call the department.

• Maybe they’re short on vehicles already.

• Maybe your PM appointment conflicts with their busiest day.

• Maybe they’ve had a terrible experience with shop turnaround.

• Maybe nobody knows who’s responsible for getting the vehicle to you.

• Maybe the notification is going to the wrong person.

You won’t find all of those answers on a dashboard.

If the same department or asset keeps showing up on the overdue list, talk to somebody.

Make ownership clear

Who owns each part of the PM process?

• Someone needs to monitor what’s approaching.

• Someone needs to schedule it.

• Someone needs to release the vehicle.

• Someone needs to complete the work.

• Someone needs to follow up when the appointment is missed.

• And eventually, somebody needs authority to escalate it.

The podcast episode includes some pretty extreme examples of escalation. Marc talked about fleets retrieving overdue vehicles with tow trucks and others shutting off fuel cards to get assets back for maintenance.

Hopefully you don’t have to get there.

Clear escalation rules can keep a late PM from turning into a four-month argument over who gets the keys.

Give departments time to plan

If you tell someone at 4 p.m. that you need their truck tomorrow morning, you’ve made compliance harder.

Give them notice when you can.

Tell them what’s due.

Tell them when you want the vehicle.

Give them your best estimate of how long you’ll need it.

And use what you already know about the asset when you make that estimate.

If the last inspection showed the tires were getting close, that matters.

If there’s deferred brake work, that matters.

If there’s an open service request, that matters.

The more you know before the vehicle arrives, the better you can plan the visit.

Give people another way to do their jobs

Marc and Drew spent some time talking about loaners and motor pools during the episode for good reason.

It’s easier to hand over the keys when you know you’re still getting another set.

Not every fleet has a pile of spare vehicles sitting around. Most don’t.

But take a hard look at the options you do have.

Could a motor pool cover certain departments?

Could you keep a small number of loaners?

Could departments share an underutilized unit temporarily?

Could you schedule around predictable low-demand periods?

Your stakeholder is trying to keep their operation running too.

Helping them solve that problem can make it a lot easier for them to help you solve yours.

Make the shop visit count

You finally got the vehicle.

Use the opportunity.

Look at the PM.

Look at the open service requests.

Look at previous inspections.

Check deferred work.

Review recalls or campaigns.

See what’s coming due soon.

Look at the asset history.

You don’t want to send the vehicle back Tuesday and call the department Wednesday because somebody just noticed another service is due next week.

This is one place disconnected systems can really hurt a fleet.

RTA refers to hidden risks created by disconnected information and manual processes as fleet blind spots. Service requests in one place, PM schedules somewhere else, paper inspections sitting on a desk, and deferred work living in somebody’s head make it much harder to see the full picture while you actually have the vehicle.

Get as much of that information in front of the shop as you reasonably can.

Then use it.

Figure out where your turnaround time is going

If your departments don't want to give you vehicles because they don't know when they'll get them back, dig into turnaround time.

Don't settle for an average.

Look at the ugly ones.

Why did that PM take three days?

Did the vehicle sit for six hours before anyone touched it?

Were you waiting for parts?

Did you discover additional work?

Was there a technician shortage?

Did the work order bounce around?

Was the vehicle actually finished Tuesday and not picked up until Thursday?

Those are very different problems.

If you know where the time is going, you can work on it.

And when your shop starts getting vehicles back when you said it would, people notice.

How should you measure PM compliance?

The basic PM compliance calculation is:

PMs completed within your defined interval ÷ PMs due × 100

But don't stop at the percentage.

Say you're at 95%.

Great.

What's hiding in the other 5%?

If those overdue assets include mission-critical units or vehicles that are significantly past their intervals, you've still got a problem worth addressing.

Along with your overall PM compliance rate, look at:

• number of overdue PMs
• how far each PM is overdue
• overdue PMs by department
• overdue PMs by asset class
• repeat overdue assets
• missed PM appointments
• reasons appointments were missed
• PM turnaround time
• assets approaching their PM intervals

You may find that a handful of departments or vehicles are driving most of the problem.

That's a much more useful conversation than simply saying, “We're at 92% this month.”

What's a good fleet PM compliance rate?

There isn't one percentage every fleet should copy.

Your target depends on your asset mix, service intervals, operating conditions, regulatory obligations, and how you define an on-time PM.

Before comparing your percentage with somebody else's, make sure you're measuring the same thing.

• What counts as on time?

• Do you allow a mileage, hour, or time window?

• Does that window change by asset class?

• How current is your meter data?

• How do you treat vehicles that are unavailable for legitimate reasons?

A benchmark is only useful when you understand what's behind it.

For transit fleets, the Federal Transit Administration provides one useful example of the principle. Its maintenance review guidance compares actual PM performance with the intervals established in the agency's maintenance plan.

The point is pretty simple.

Writing down a PM interval isn't compliance.

Doing the maintenance on time is.

What should your FMIS do for PM compliance?

Your FMIS shouldn't just tell you how many PMs you missed last month.

By then, the vehicle was already late.

You should be able to see what's coming.

• Which vehicles are approaching PM?

• Which are overdue?

• Who has them?

• Have they been scheduled?

• What's already open on those assets?

• What did the last inspection find?

• Is there deferred work?

What's the shop going to need when the vehicle arrives?

That information needs to be useful while your team is doing the work.

RTA Fleet360 is built around that idea. It connects PMs with work orders, inspections, service requests, asset history, shop activity, and reporting so public fleet teams can see what's happening without piecing the story together from disconnected systems.

The software still can't drive across town and take the keys out of someone's hand.

Some days, fleet managers probably wish it could.

You still need a process people follow.

A dashboard won't tell you the whole story

PM compliance is a useful KPI.

But a percentage can't tell you why a truck keeps missing its PM.

It can't tell you that a department supervisor thinks every shop visit will take a week.

It can't tell you that your service writer keeps promising turnaround times the shop can't hit.

It can't tell you that a vehicle finished yesterday and nobody bothered to pick it up.

Those are fleet management problems.

So the next time you're looking at your overdue PM list, don't stop at the number.

Find the repeat offenders.

Look at how late they are.

Look at which departments have them.

Then pick up the phone.

Ask why the vehicles aren't coming in.

You might learn more about your PM program from that conversation than you will from the dashboard.

This article was inspired by a recent episode of our podcast. Check out the full episode for even more tips and tricks: