Smart selection guide for school bus fleet maintenance features

School bus fleet maintenance features can play a critical role in helping your district’s buses stay in optimal shape, keeping your budget in check and maintaining a safe environment for all aboard. But what exactly can these types of solutions do, what are the must-have maintenance features in a school bus telematics platform and how do you know which will work best for your fleet? To simplify these considerations, we’ve broken down everything you need to know to help you make the smartest procurement decision and get on the road to a safer, healthier bus fleet. 

What are school bus fleet maintenance features?

School bus fleet maintenance features are tools that enable you to collect, report on and interpret key bus health indicators. These indicators can range from engine data, battery degradation metrics and tire pressure readings to odometer values and fluid levels. 

By using these features to analyze vehicle metrics and performance, you can help your district:

• Reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of its fleet
• Extend vehicle longevity by providing data-driven maintenance
• Optimize expenditures on repairs and routine servicing
• Cut inefficiencies and costs spent on excessive maintenance
• Smartly schedule preventative service to reduce unplanned downtime
• Enhance the reliability and timeliness of your student transportation operations
• Provide parents with greater peace of mind that the buses their children are being transported on are as safe to drive as possible
• Prevent unnecessary wear and tear from affecting your vehicles

In order to work toward achieving these benefits, it’s imperative to consider how the maintenance features of a fleet management platform will fit with your current transportation strategies. Advanced maintenance tools should enable you to individually track service schedules for each vehicle, help you keep organized logs of past repairs and actively anticipate new maintenance needs.

Crucial school bus fleet maintenance features to have

For a clear path to savings and safer, more reliable student transportation operations, make sure you identify maintenance tools that give you key insights into each aspect of your buses’ health. Below, we’ve listed several of the most important school bus fleet maintenance tools for safer, more cost-efficient operations. Use them to collect actionable insights, optimize service schedules and keep your vehicles on the road.

Real-time diagnostics: For a truly optimized school bus fleet, surface-level insights on engine performance alone are not enough. It’s important to have both deeper engine data to base key maintenance decisions on, as well as other metrics on fluids, tire pressure and battery health. Look for a solution that can help you gain a holistic view of all your vehicles’ pertinent analytics in one place. For example, Geotab’s Maintenance Center offers you the ability to review real-time alerts about engine fault codes and other types of vehicle health metrics from a single dashboard, making it easier to assess the overall state of your fleet’s health and make more informed decisions.

Predictive maintenance tools: To extend the longevity of your school buses, preventative maintenance is just as critical as monitoring engine fault codes and other onboard diagnostics. However, a generalized preventative maintenance strategy may not account for the nuances of each individual vehicle in your fleet. For example, you may replace your school buses’ oil all on the same time-based schedule, or bring several vehicles in at once for routine service, even if some are slightly ahead of or behind others’ schedules. This can potentially result in over-maintenance or (under-maintenance) and cost you more money over time. Predictive maintenance tools can help you solve these gaps by using sensors and AI to gather data and calculate when certain components are likely to fail. Using these school bus maintenance features, you can provide more targeted care for your buses, administer the right service at the right time and help reduce the potential of a roadside breakdown from occurring.

Fault code enrichment: Go beyond simple fault code data alone with fault code enrichment. This capability adds the crucial context of severity grades, prioritization and recommendations to your diagnostic data, giving you a clear understanding of what to do next whenever an issue is detected. Geotab’ solution provides Fault Code Enrichment, powered by Noregon. With this capability, gain data-driven guidance on what steps you should take whenever potential issues are reported for smarter school bus maintenance.

Digitized work order management: Centralize all work order data and schedule, track and report on maintenance tasks using a digital approach to work order management. This capability enables you to streamline the conversion of maintenance requests into work orders, eliminating manual documentation processes and information silos. With Geotab’s Work Order Management feature, you can even study maintenance costs and downtime totals, enabling you to quantify the effects of unexpected service needs. Make mechanics’ jobs easier with highly prescriptive, digital work orders that help them diagnose problems faster and get your buses back to your depot quicker.

Maintenance expense reporting: Gone are the days of arduous, manual expense reports. With digitized maintenance expense reporting, you can help automate the tracking of service costs according to each vehicle in your fleet. Easily identify which of your buses are costing your district the most money and make data-driven vehicle replacement decisions. Having a spend threshold in mind when analyzing digital maintenance expenses can additionally help you make easier sense of the data and decide when a bus is no longer worth investing in.

Key maintenance questions to ask when evaluating a school bus fleet management platform

Now that we’ve covered the primary school bus fleet maintenance features you should look for, it’s important to know what key questions to keep in mind while surveying the marketplace. Use these questions below to help guide your decision and find a fleet management solution that doesn't just snugly fit with your current maintenance practices, but actively enhances them as well.

• Will this solution help me enhance student and driver safety and easily mesh with my safe driving program?
• Can the vehicle health data from my fleet management solution feed seamlessly into my fleet maintenance information system (FMIS)?
• Does the platform support strong maintenance outcomes and better fleet health overall?
• Does this platform offer the other capabilities my department needs, such as safety tools, fuel management features and GPS tracking?
• Does the solution offer driver vehicle inspection reports (DVIRs) and integrate with student ridership systems?
• Can the platform help me assess the integrity of my buses’ electrical systems and oil life?
• Will this solution help me cut costs and improve the reliability of my district’s school buses?
• Does the system offer the granular level of engine reporting needed to understand the context of diagnostic trouble code (DTC) alerts?
• Will it make repair management easier and streamline diagnoses for technicians, empowering them to fix mechanical problems faster?

Lastly, make sure to evaluate which of these questions must have non-negotiable “yes” answers to them and which your district might be more flexible on when looking for a school bus fleet management system. By effectively considering all of your options, you’ll make the best choice possible for your fleet.

How to get started with smarter school bus maintenance and optimized vehicle health

Once you’ve decided on a fleet management solution, you can start by deploying a pilot program with a smaller subset of vehicles in your school bus fleet. Measure the solution’s effectiveness and the potential return on investment by digging into key vehicle health metrics and forecasting how proactive, data-driven maintenance may save your district money over time. Establishing a clear path to ROI is key before rolling out the solution across your entire fleet of school buses, as it will help you know how to closely measure success, generate buy-in across all aspects of your district and help protect your budget.

Geotab’s integrated student transportation solution goes beyond simple maintenance reporting, offering a comprehensive solution for managing virtually every aspect of your school bus fleet. From detailed maintenance insights to fuel consumption monitoring and leading-edge safety tools, our platform offers valuable capabilities to help you optimize your fleet operations and cut costs. We also offer 24/7 support to assist you as you trek along your fleet maintenance journey, keenly staying right by your side from discovery through product implementation and beyond. Begin enhancing the health of your school buses with Geotab as your fleet maintenance partner today.

Learn more about how Geotab’s features can help you improve the health of your school buses by visiting our maintenance solutions webpage.