4 Types of Preventive Maintenance For Trucks

If you’re in charge of a heavy-duty fleet, you already know why preventive fleet maintenance matters. But we’ve got a word count to hit, so let’s go over the benefits anyway: prioritizing preventive maintenance (PM) can help you keep your trucks in good shape, avoid downtime, and cut costs on repair work.

What you might not know is that there are different ways to schedule these crucial appointments—and each of these approaches has its own pros and cons. Once you understand what sets different types of preventive maintenance apart, you’ll be able to choose the right option or (spoiler alert!) options for your fleet.

What Are the 4 Types of Preventive Maintenance?

No matter how large or small your fleet is, having some sort of heavy-duty equipment preventive maintenance strategy in place is always a good idea. That way, you won’t need to spend time and money dealing with issues after they happen. Instead, you can anticipate these problems and solve them before they have a chance to become worse.

There are four basic types of preventive maintenance you should know about:

1. Time-based preventive maintenance
2. Usage-based preventive maintenance
3. Condition-based preventive maintenance
4. Predictive preventive maintenance

What’s that? Having literally any context for these PM strategies would be helpful? Well, we aim to please, so keep reading for a closer look at the ways your fleet can approach preventive maintenance.

1. Time-Based Preventive Maintenance

Time-based preventive maintenance is the most “traditional” of the four main PM strategies. This technique is based on doing maintenance work at specific times. Are we moving too fast for you?

Any maintenance task that relies on a specific calendar interval (such as monthly or quarterly maintenance work) is an example of time-based PM. Do you take care of jobs like oil changes, routine inspections, or air filter replacements after a specific number of days or weeks pass? If so, you’re already familiar with this preventive maintenance strategy.

When you use time-based preventive maintenance, you’ll be able to start enjoying the benefits of preventive maintenance with minimal difficulty. Since implementing this maintenance strategy is as simple as creating appointments on a calendar, you shouldn’t have trouble creating or following maintenance schedules.

2. Usage-Based Preventive Maintenance

Unfortunately, time-based PM has one big drawback—it doesn’t account for how your trucks are actually doing. If you only have time-based preventive maintenance in your bag of tools, you might struggle to give your vehicles the services they need when they need them. For example, truck routes that navigate through mountains will have different wear and tear than routes over mostly flat terrain, even if the mileage itself looks the same. 

Usage-based PM could be part of your solution to this problem. Unlike time-based preventive maintenance, usage-based PM involves factors like engine hours and mileage. For example, you could plan to take care of specific maintenance tasks every 5,000 miles for some trucks and 10,000 miles for other trucks.

What this means is that usage-based preventive maintenance is a great choice when premature wear and tear is a concern. And while keeping track of mileage and engine hours is trickier than following a calendar interval, software can simplify things by giving you automated reminders when it’s time to take care of PMs.

3. Condition-Based Preventive Maintenance

So, is usage-based preventive maintenance the most advanced type of PM out there? We’re only halfway through the list, so you shouldn’t be surprised to learn the answer is “no.” The next step up is condition-based PM, which involves monitoring the condition of your trucks even more closely.

When you start using condition-based preventive maintenance, you’ll use sensors and telematics equipment in your trucks to watch performance indicators like oil condition and brake pad thickness. From that starting point, you’ll have no trouble scheduling PMs whenever your trucks need work.

The only real drawback to condition-based preventive maintenance is the fact that it can be tricky to schedule and track condition-based PMs. Fortunately, software that’s compatible with your trucks’ telematics equipment can help.

4. Predictive Preventive Maintenance

The final (and most powerful) PM type is predictive preventive maintenance. With this service scheduling method, you’ll analyze data from telematics equipment and sensors in your trucks t-

“But Fullbay,” you say out loud to your computer or smartphone, “this sounds not entirely unlike condition-based PM!” And to that, we respond: honestly, you’re not wrong? There is a difference, though—predictive maintenance can go beyond other PM scheduling methods thanks to the power of artificial intelligence.

When you use AI to analyze the condition of your trucks and schedule PMs, you can do an even better job of proactively addressing vital maintenance tasks before they become a problem. You’ll enjoy advantages like reduced repair expenses, fewer breakdowns, and longer equipment lifespans.

Choosing the Right Type of Preventive Maintenance for Your Trucks

Okay! Now that you know a thing or two about the different types of preventive maintenance, you’ll be ready to choose one for your fleet…right? Well, the truth is a bit more complicated than that. 

Generally speaking, mixing and matching different PM types will help you get the best results. By combining time-based maintenance schedules, usage level monitoring, and data analysis, you can create customized schedules that truly account for your fleet’s needs.

While building a scheduling strategy for your fleet, be sure to think about your:

• Fleet size. The larger your fleet, the harder it will be to track PMs manually. No matter what scheduling strategies you use, you’ll need digital assistance if you have more than a few trucks.
• Equipment criticality. If a piece of equipment is particularly important to your business, you shouldn’t just set a recurring maintenance interval for it and hope for the best. Even if you use time-based PMs for much of your fleet, it’s best to give truly crucial equipment some extra attention.
• Budget. As you might expect, implementing data-driven maintenance scheduling will cost more than setting up a recurring reminder on your calendar app. Still, you’ll want to think about this technology as an investment in your fleet’s future.
• Operational goals. If you commit to one or more advanced PM scheduling methods, you’ll be able to take a more proactive approach to fleet maintenance than ever before. 

How Can Heavy-Duty Shop Maintenance Software Help?

No matter what types of preventive maintenance your fleet uses, you’ll get the best results by investing in exceptional heavy-duty shop maintenance software. These programs can automatically track upcoming maintenance appointments and remind you when your trucks need service, but that’s not all they do. If you have an internal shop, your system should also integrate with telematics equipment and help you keep crucial parts in stock with inventory management capabilities. 

At Fullbay, we take pride in the fact that our software comes with features like these (among many others). Take your PM scheduling strategy to the next level by scheduling a demo ASAP!