Fullbay Makes a Pitstop

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got an exciting announcement to make: the Fullbay family is growing! As of today, we are acquiring Pitstop and its cutting-edge, AI-powered predictive maintenance. 

Pitstop allows fleet managers to “forecast asset risks in real time and schedule maintenance dynamically … [automating] communication, reports, and updates for vehicles, drivers, fleet managers, and technicians.” 

Why is it a great new teammate for Fullbay? 

For starters, it brings AI-powered predictive maintenance into the platform — that’s a major step from reactive repair to proactive maintenance.

But like Fullbay, Pitstop was built for the heavy-duty industry. Founder Shiva Bhardwaj grew up in a repair shop: GB Autos in Canada. He spent his formative years surrounded by cars and trucks, as well as the tools and people who kept them running. He had early exposure to technicians diagnosing problems and figuring out fixes. As he grew up, he observed vehicles becoming increasingly complex and data-rich; maintenance processes, though, largely stayed the same.

After spending some time in NVIDIA’s automotive branch, Shiva turned his attention to that issue. He launched Pitstop with the goal of bringing truck repair into the twenty-first century. Even the name, “Pitstop,” reflects its mission: making commercial fleet maintenance as fast and efficient as a Formula 1 pit stop.

PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE: FIX PROBLEMS BEFORE THEY BECOME BREAKDOWNS

Pitstop’s core innovation is turning vehicle data into early warnings that prevent roadside failures, major repairs, and the accompanying downtime. 

Where do they get that data? We’re glad you asked:

• Telematics
• Sensors
• Trouble codes
• Vehicle use patterns
• Environmental conditions

Pitstop’s platform generates alerts about issues like DEF systems, NOx sensors, and after treatment problems before they can escalate, allowing fleets to plan repairs proactively instead of reacting to breakdowns. It’s like preventive maintenance on uppers. Very sci-fi.

Techs can prepare ahead of time and gather the necessary parts, and there’s less chaos overall from roadside breakdown calls. Pitstop’s VP of Sales, Reed Clarke, shared several stories from Pitstop customers describing how the platform had saved them time and money. Invariably, they go like this: Pitstop alerts a fleet to a budding problem. The fleet creates a plan and makes the fix before a breakdown. The fleet spends a few hundred bucks and a couple of hours instead of $10,000 and days or weeks.

“We want to catch things so early that we create small repairs instead of huge repairs and tow costs,” Reed said, adding “[which] drives a lot of safety as well.” 

PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE IS ABOUT UPTIME, NOT FAILURES

Brace yourselves, because we’ve got some shocking news. Predictive maintenance is quite awesome at pointing out when parts need to be replaced…but it can also tell you when you shouldn’t repair something yet.

We know. As the kids are saying, we are shook.

Plenty of trucks are sent to the shop the moment a part hits its stated life expectancy. You all know how it goes from there: a truck is pulled off its route, and sometimes there’s a mad scramble for a replacement unit, and then shop capacity gets tied up, and then…well, it’s not a party anyone likes revisiting. 

Pitstop uses remote diagnostics and predictive analytics to help fleets determine whether an issue is critical. Sometimes it is, and the truck needs to come off the road immediately. Often, though, the issue can wait.

That small distinction can have a huge impact on uptime and how shops manage their workload. In one analysis Reed walked us through, Pitstop flagged a few vehicles with immediate, fix-this-now issues that needed to come off the road immediately. You know, the kind of catches that prevent breakdowns. But the bigger story, as Reed explained to us, was the number of times the platform indicated that a vehicle could safely stay in service until its next scheduled maintenance window.

Rather than pulling trucks in reactively every time there’s even a hint of a warning light, the work gets planned and executed at the right time. For fleet operators, that means a unit spends more time on the road generating revenue. For shops, that means fewer unnecessary interruptions and a better opportunity to bundle a repair into scheduled service instead of reacting to every alert like it’s the Horn of Gondor. 

The work still gets done; it just gets done at a time that works for everyone. 

A FLEET HEALTH SCORE BUILT FROM BILLIONS OF DATA POINTS

This all seems great, Fullbay, you may be saying, but how exactly is Pitstop working this magic? 

They use the Force. Duh.

OK, fine, there’s more to it. Pitstop has access to billions of data points. Yes, billions with a B. It can compare an individual vehicle to thousands of similar vehicles (of the same make, model, and usage) to create a health score that reflects how a unit’s maintenance compares to its peers. These data points include the ones we mentioned earlier (telematics, sensors, and so on), as well as driver inspections, PM schedules, repair invoices, and even environmental factors like weather and driving conditions. 

Next, Pitstop analyzes how those vehicles are being maintained. It looks for patterns like PM interval timing, component failure patterns, inspection results, and more. This helps the system see what “healthy” behavior (for want of a better term) looks like for that vehicle type. 

The foodies among us will appreciate how Reed describes it: “Our soup is a lot bigger, so we can look at more ingredients.” 

From there, Pitstop generates a health score, which places each vehicle within a percentile compared to its peers. A truck might rank in the 58th percentile, which means 42% of similar vehicles are being maintained more effectively. That health score prevents breakdowns and unnecessary maintenance, and allows for more intelligent PM scheduling. 

In short, these data points and the resultant health score help fleets maintain every vehicle at exactly the right time. 

FULLBAY + PITSTOP: BETTER TOGETHER

To say we’re excited about bringing Pitstop into the Fullbay family would be an understatement. Honestly, the two platforms fit together like peanut butter and jelly. Pitstop predicts problems and helps fleets get ahead of maintenance; Fullbay handles the day-to-day reality inside the shop — the work orders, technicians, parts, and repairs that keep trucks moving. Put the two together, and you start to see the shape of something bigger: maintenance that’s not just reactive or preventive, but genuinely…wait for it…intelligent. 

Let’s not forget the role of scale here. Fullbay is the largest, most trusted name in heavy-duty repair, with more than 5,000 shops on the platform and over 20 million service orders managed. That’s a massive amount of real-world repair data, including information about how trucks actually fail, how they’re fixed, and how shops keep them running. Combine that with Pitstop’s predictive analytics and insights, and suddenly shops and fleets have a level of visibility the industry really hasn’t seen before. 

At Fullbay, our mission has always been about helping repair shops succeed while keeping the trucks that power our economy running safely and reliably. The more insight we can bring to maintenance, the better the outcome for everyone. Fewer surprises, less downtime, and — you got it — safer roads for us all. That’s the future we’re building towards, and the partnership with Pitstop is a big step in that direction. 

You can [read/watch/imbibe via osmosis] the announcement over at [platform]. Stay tuned — we’ll soon have more information about the Fullbay/Pitstop union and how it will help customers run tighter, more profitable shops and fleets.