Got Fleets? How Independent Repair Shops Can Score Fleet Customers

Gaining a fleet as a customer is a very exciting prospect for most independent repair shops. The perks are pretty obvious: They can bring steady, often substantial volumes of work to a shop, which makes planning (and cash flow) much easier. And if you’ve got a good relationship with a fleet and they grow over time, well, that can equate to more business and revenue for you. 

The catch: a lot of fleets have their own shops, often referred to as internal repair shops, that handle the bulk of their maintenance and repair work. We want to point out that not all fleets have internal shops, and those that do are sometimes willing to work with independent operations anyway. It’s just a matter of attracting them and securing their business.

But Fullbay, you might be saying, I am but a small shop with little digital footprint…how can I hope to land a fleet?

Folks, where there’s a will, there’s a way. 

Some fleets do indeed want to work with independent repair shops. Back at Diesel Connect 2025, Peter Cooper of Ascend Consulting sat down with Mark Kennedy, VP of Equipment at Knight-Swift Transportation, and discussed what Knight-Swift looks for in a repair partner. The recap is worth reading (and the video itself is worth watching), but we realize you might also want to hear from independent shop owners who have done the whole fleet thing.

So, for this article, we sat down with the following good folks from independent operations: 

• Ashley Sowell of Integrity Fleet Services in Texas.
• Jimmy Wall of Donahue Truck Centers in California.

These fine folks brought an independent perspective to the conversation. They had a lot of excellent advice, which we’ve compiled here to help make your shop more attractive for fleets. 

Position Your Shop as a Partner

First things first: Any shop can fix a truck. At least, we hope any shop can fix a truck. What makes your shop stand out from everyone else’s is the experience you provide. 

This can look like:

Providing a single point of contact.

Assign your fleet customers one person who will coordinate all their maintenance and repairs. You could call this person an account manager, though some smaller operations have balked at that title; sometimes it’s the shop owner, sometimes it’s a particular service advisor. Larger operations may hire an actual account rep. The gist of it is, if a fleet manager needs something done, they get in touch with this person and that individual gets it handled. Likewise, if information needs to be relayed to the fleet manager, it’s this person who does it. 

Technician familiarity.

It may not be possible to always have the same tech(s) on a fleet’s vehicles, but if you can swing it, give it a try. When the same techs see the same vehicles repeatedly, diagnostics get faster and mistakes tend to go down. “Oh, that Peterbilt is back in?” they might say. “I bet it’s that injector.”

We probably don’t need to point out that faster repairs = more uptime, and fleets love uptime…but we just pointed it out anyway, so there you are.

Keeping up with preventive maintenance (PM).

It’s easy to assume that fleets are just thinking about trucks all the time. But the reality is they’re concerned with logistics, with their drivers, with their contracts. The trucks are quite often the last thing on their minds. So a shop that can track their vehicles and notify them when PM work is coming due is going to be looked on favorably (and now you see why we suggested an account manager). 

Proactive communication.

We’ll go into communication itself more in a little bit, but in this particular case we’re talking about getting ahead of problems. Proactive communication goes hand-in-hand with preventive maintenance: think flagging repeat failures across vehicles, mentioning early wear trends (“We notice these injectors fail around 180K”), and advising on timing. This is a big one for fleets, who are razor-focused on uptime: “You could run this another month, or knock the component swap out now while it’s already down.”

Keeping an eye on their units this way positions you as a partner, not just a wrench-for-hire.

Providing a welcoming environment.

You should do this for all your customers, really, but fleet customers — including executives, management, and drivers — may end up being pretty regular visitors. Roll out the red carpet, or at least make them feel comfortable. When a driver arrives at Donahue Truck Centers, for example, Jimmy’s team offers hot chocolate and shows them to a comfortable area to hang out. 

Communication is Key

Come on, Fullbay, you might be saying, you say communication is important in all of your articles!

Well…because it is. 

If all shops were expert communicators, we would not have to keep talking about how important communication is. And look, we’re willing to accept that most of you probably don’t set out thinking, “I am going to convey as LITTLE information as possible to this customer!” But work happens: there’s an emergency call-out, you run out of a part, three techs are sick, there’s no coffee…it becomes easy to “forget” to stay in touch. 

Everyone we’ve spoken to about taking on fleet work has emphasized the need for steady communication between shop and fleet. Whether you’ve got a dedicated account manager or it’s just you, the owner, pulling double-duty, you need to keep the fleet manager in the loop on:

• Long-term service plans. “I want to show them that we’re gonna give them solutions because I’m looking for that long term versus just the right now,” says Ashley. That might mean booking out preventive maintenance and scheduling component swaps ahead of time (and again, touches on preventive maintenance and proactive communication).
• When things are going wrong. Maybe your vendor is having trouble getting you a component. Maybe that component suddenly jumped in price. Maybe you’ve got three techs down and everything is falling behind. In each of these instances, you need to let your fleet customers know what’s up. They run on very, very tight schedules. They might not like hearing something might take longer or be more expensive, but they will appreciate the heads up.

Clean Up Your Shop!

A clean, well-organized shop isn’t just visually appealing. It also conveys to your customers that you mean business. Donahue Truck Centers has six locations, and Jimmy acknowledges that some of them are structurally prettier than others. But each location takes great care with how its tools are stored, and how clean its floors are, and so on. “We’re always inviting fleets to come take tours of our location,” he says. 

“Clean up your mess,” Peter adds, pointing out that a lot of fleet execs may show up in a suit or at the very least nice shoes. They do not want to be hanging around in a place that hasn’t washed the floor in 20 years. 

Why does cleanliness matter so much? After all, repair can still be messy, right? Sure, but it shouldn’t start out messy. Humans actually do have negative responses to mess and clutter; that’s why Marie Kondo became so popular.

A messy shop with tools strewn all over doesn’t exactly instill confidence. Instead, it provokes a stress response, and makes a fleet rep think there’s a higher chance of missed steps, and maybe poor discipline and workmanship. If they treat their shop this way, the rep might think, how are they going to treat our vehicles?

A clean shop, meanwhile, indicates a controlled environment where things get done. You could even say it sparks joy.

How Else Can Your Make Your Shop Appealing?

First impressions matter — and for fleet reps, your shop’s appearance speaks volumes before a single word is exchanged. Here are a few practical ways to keep things tidy and professional:

Maintain your digital footprint.

Keep your website, Google Business account, and social media clean and up to date. We are, at this point, programmed to see an empty or infrequently updated social media account as a sign that the business isn’t doing well. But at the same time, don’t take this admonition as a suggestion to post 10,000 times on Facebook and hope someone spots you.

Make sure your website has a clear fleet services page that is easy to find. Using SEO terms like “fleet maintenance” or “fleet PM programs” are a way to get Google’s eyes on you. 

Offer your shop for work.

Reach out to fleets you’re interested in and let them know you’re open to work. At Diesel Connect, Mark Kennedy suggested finding nearby shops a fleet might be using and offering your services. “Let them know what you can do … be a resource for them,” he suggests. You might score overflow work first, which could, over time, expand into becoming a full-time partner. 

Look into VMRS.

Not everyone wants to learn or use VMRS. It’s a whole other set of codes! But a lot of big fleets (Knight-Swift included) would like their repair partners to use them, or at least be willing to use them. Your mileage may vary, but it won’t hurt to be open to them. 

Look into local fleets too.

When we say “fleet,” your first thought is probably a large national company like Knight-Swift. But there are all sorts of smaller fleets out there who need maintenance, too: construction equipment, bucket trucks, garbage trucks, rental RVs…the list goes on. You might have a bunch of fleets in your immediate area that could make excellent long-term customers. 

Train your people to spot opportunities.

Some shops, Peter told us, have more of a “sales deterrent department.” If your shop is actively looking for fleet work, whoever’s manning the phones needs to a) know that and b) ask questions and not jump to no immediately. If a person’s knee-jerk reaction is, “I don’t think we can handle that much work,” that’s a consideration they need to bring to the owner instead of shutting it down immediately. 

Maintain a good reputation.

Let’s say a fleet is on the hunt for a new repair vendor and stumbles across your Google Reviews. Do those reviews talk about how great your shop is, or are they all complaints? The person skimming those reviews is going to very quickly form an idea of what your customers think of you.

So…how do you make sure your reputation is intact? A lot of it comes down to doing good work and being honest and upfront with your customers. If something goes wrong, make it right. If your customers like you, other potential customers (of all sizes) will notice. 

What Should You Watch Out For? 

While steady work from a fleet is great if you can get it, there are some pitfalls you need to watch out for. Peter did point out that several of these considerations (and the issues that can stem from them) are mostly related to not properly setting customer expectations. We get it: fleet work is exciting, and sometimes the idea of all that steady work just makes you want to sign on the dotted line before asking too many questions. But keep the following in mind: 

Ask if they’re happy with their current advisor.

Why has this fleet landed on your doorstep? It’s not necessarily because they’re unhappy with the other shop, by the way. Sometimes things happen — they’re pushing into a new regional market, or a polar vortex has knocked out their other repair vendors (true story) — but sometimes there have been real issues with past repair shops. Find out what those are and make sure they aren’t issues that will break a possible future partnership. 

Spell out EVERYTHING.

What kind of turnaround time does the fleet expect, and can you do that without impeding on your other work? Get dollar and hour amounts on paper, along with other expectations. 

Make sure you can afford the fleet.

If you sign your life away and find out later that your new fleet customer that wants you to prioritize them takes 90 days to pay…yes, you’ll be getting steady checks, but they’re going to be coming in like, three months after you do the work. Can you float things for that long? Additionally, some fleets have a limit on how much markup they’ll pay on parts — will you end up taking the hit for that?

Like we said, these are issues you could run into with any other customer. But fleets, due to their size, ratchet everything up by a thousand. 

Encourage Them to Use the Customer Portal

Something that came up multiple times in our conversations was the Fullbay Customer Portal, and how fleets can turn to it if they want to see everything going on. “I tell them it’s our pizza tracker,” Ashley says. And honestly, that’s a good descriptor: a lot of pizza joints let you track every step of the process once your order is on. You can see who’s making it, when it goes into the oven, and when it’s ready for pickup (or in the car coming to you). 

In other words, the Customer Portal provides exactly the sort of insight and transparency a fleet manager wants from a repair partner. They can see where the truck is in the process. Yeah, they might still want to hear from you personally about it, but they can summon up the information and see how their unit is baking and even add pepperoni if they need to.

Want to know more about how fleets and independent shops can work together? We’ll again recommend the Knight Swift conversation from Diesel Connect. You could even still get tickets to the 2026 event if you want to see more great topics like that. All you have to do is show up — we’ll bring the pizza.