The top five benefits of intelligent police fleet maintenance

What if your police vehicles could tell you what they needed and when, before larger problems begin to surface? That’s what’s possible with intelligent police fleet maintenance. This concept describes using data-driven insights to guide maintenance decisions and prevent smaller issues from escalating. By relying on these insights to gauge current vehicle health and forecast future maintenance risks, your department can:

• Maximize vehicle uptime
• Combat accelerated wear and tear
• Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO)
• Enhance operational efficiency
• Increase officer safety

In this blog post, we’ll dive deep into each of these benefits, showing you the tangible ways that data-driven fleet maintenance redefines how you manage your police vehicles.

Benefit 1: Maximized uptime across your entire police fleet

Inoperable police vehicles undermine your ability to serve the public. Whether due to repairs or a breakdown, unplanned vehicle downtime stretches resources thin and makes it harder to do your job. Data-driven fleet maintenance helps you keep your police vehicles deployment-ready through rich capabilities like:

• Detailed engine diagnostics - Reduce breakdown risks by getting alerted of engine faults as soon as they arise, without having to wait for an officer to manually report them.
• Data-driven maintenance scheduling - Optimize maintenance scheduling by planning vehicle service at non-critical times, based on specific usage patterns.
• Predictive maintenance insights - Prevent costly, extended repairs by predicting and addressing vehicle part failures before they escalate into major issues.

To take advantage of these capabilities, the right tools are needed. That’s precisely what Alanna Bindi found during her time as Fleet Manager for the City of Stockton. Before the city rolled out a new fleet management system, it was challenging for them to get ahead of smaller vehicle issues before they ballooned into larger ones.

Bindi recently spoke about these hurdles in a Geotab-led webinar, alongside Robert Martinez, former Deputy Commissioner for the NYPD. In Bindi’s words:

Interested in learning more about the City of Stockton’s fleet maintenance experiences? Watch our full webinar here to learn more.

Benefit 2: Reduced police vehicle wear and tear

Police vehicles often endure extreme usage, from long idling to high-speed pursuits. These demands can weather their engines faster over time. But with data-driven insights, you can limit the effects of harmful driving patterns and extend vehicle lifespans:

• Proactive maintenance - Keep your engines in better condition over time by using AI-enabled tools to detect and analyze performance changes. For example, worsening engine vibrations might be a sign that failure could be on the horizon. Rely on the power of predictive insights and AI to determine when to resolve smaller issues like this before they turn into major headaches.
• Idling insights - Track unproductive idling to develop targeted strategies that combat wasted fuel and engine deterioration.
• Vehicle utilization - Identify and correct usage imbalances across your fleet to even out wear and maximize vehicle lifespans.

In the City of Stockton’s case, Bindi shared how her team prioritizes balanced usage across its police vehicles to combat uneven wear and tear:

Benefit 3: Lower total cost of ownership (TCO)

Intelligent police fleet maintenance also benefits your budget. By decreasing the TCO per vehicle through data-driven servicing, you can free up valuable budget space and enhance fiscal responsibility. Fleet management features like these are the secret to a lower TCO:

• Diagnostic trouble code (DTC) data collection - Keep your vehicles in top shape by using a fleet management solution to promptly interpret DTCs and resolve them. For example, Geotab’s rich engine diagnostics allow you to monitor DTCs over time and gain crucial context into each issue’s severity.
• Fault prioritization - Avoid costlier maintenance expenses by identifying and addressing the highest-impact problems affecting your police vehicles first.
• Data-driven maintenance scheduling - Easily monitor all maintenance needs in a single place with a fleet management platform. Keep costs down by using insights to provide the right service at the right time for each police vehicle.

All of these capabilities can ladder into a proactive maintenance strategy, something that’s crucial for cost-efficiency. As a former mechanic who worked his way up to eventually managing the biggest police fleet in the U.S., retired NYPD Deputy Commissioner Robert Martinez knows firsthand the savings that proactive vehicle maintenance can yield. According to Martinez:

Benefit 4: Greater efficiency, from the precinct to the mechanic’s shop

The benefits of intelligent fleet maintenance even extend beyond your vehicles themselves. In addition to cost savings, a data-driven approach drives greater efficiency both in the office and on the road. The following fleet management features make it easier for you to quickly diagnose problems, provide mechanics with detailed information and complete repairs: 

• Centralized work order management - Stop using multiple systems for maintenance tracking, scheduling and reporting. Rely on a single platform to seamlessly manage all your maintenance orders, digitize manual workflows and improve organization.
• Detailed vehicle health assessments - Limit operational impacts by using insights to stay on top of vehicle issues before they worsen. Expedite mechanic work by quickly providing maintenance staff with detailed information on any detected issues.
• Fault code enrichment - Don’t just discover vehicle problems; get data-driven recommendations on next steps to take. For example, Geotab’s Fault Code Enrichment capability helps you enhance decision-making by offering in-depth descriptions, severity ratings and recommended actions for each problem it notices. The system even pulls in AI to correlate breakdown events with key fault codes, providing you with accurate estimates of when equipment failure could occur in your own vehicles.

Across the entire police fleet maintenance cycle, technologies can boost efficiency. For the City of Stockton, Bindi shared how the latest tools have helped her department improve workflows and take better care of its police fleet:

Learn more about deploying a healthy law enforcement fleet by downloading our police fleet management ebook.

Benefit 5: Enhanced police officer safety

Well-maintained vehicles are also essential for protecting your officers. This is an often-overlooked benefit of better fleet maintenance, but it still stands as one of the most important to consider. Keep your fleet in top condition and your personnel safer using these techniques:

• Preventative maintenance scheduling - Reduce breakdown risks by using data to determine when preventative maintenance is necessary. By proactively caring for your fleet, your officers will be less likely to get stranded in dangerous situations without a working vehicle.
• Vehicle performance tracking - Keep your police vehicles ready for action by using data to consistently track and optimize their performance.
• Utilization insights - Certain vehicle parts, such as brakes, are especially crucial for collision avoidance. And with the demanding conditions certain police vehicles often face, it’s imperative to not rely on a generic service schedule to take care of them. Use individual utilization metrics to know when it’s time for each vehicle’s brake service, reduce collision risk and better protect your officers.

With deployment-ready vehicles and officer safety going hand in hand, always remember to never leave your fleet’s dependability to chance. During Martinez’s time with the NYPD, he understood how important a reliable fleet was for safe and effective operations:

Hear more of Martinez’s insights by watching the full webinar on-demand here.

How Geotab transforms police fleet maintenance

Geotab’s police fleet management solution is tailored for the unique challenges facing law enforcement agencies. Our digital tools can help you work toward the five benefits above by enabling proactive and prescriptive vehicle maintenance. Explore how our platform creates a smarter, more efficient maintenance cycle from start to finish:

Keeping your police fleet operations-ready

If a top-performing fleet is important to your department, it’s critical to prioritize smarter fleet maintenance. From avoiding costlier repairs to avoiding unplanned downtime, data-driven insights can help you make informed decisions at each phase of a vehicle’s lifecycle. 

Don’t wait to start improving the health of your fleet. Better protect your officers, your community and your budget by investing in better fleet maintenance today.

Watch a demo here to learn more about how Geotab can help you extend your fleet’s longevity and keep your vehicles action-ready.