On large industrial and manufacturing sites, equipment management and maintenance is no small or easy task. To avoid unplanned downtime and related productivity losses, key assets such as cranes, forklifts, boom lifts, light towers, welders and utility carts must be well maintained so they’re ready to go when needed. Right-sizing the fleet is equally important: Over-fleeting is a common error, one that chips away at the bottom line.

Making smart, data-driven fleet maintenance and management decisions drives significant cost savings and helps preserve project schedules, but it requires time and expertise that many companies don’t have. Finding qualified technicians is also a considerable challenge.

A turnkey, third-party onsite fleet maintenance service designed for large sites relieves the burden for companies and lets them focus on the work they do best. The Onsite Fleet Maintenance and Management Program from United Rentals includes equipment maintenance services, parts and material management and fleet advisory services and delivers cost savings of as much as 20%.

Here’s a look at six ways an onsite service such as United Rentals’ can save companies time, effort and money.

1. Reduced unplanned downtime

Designing a preventive maintenance program for a large fleet and staying on top of it is a heavy lift. But when equipment fails or underperforms due to lack of proper maintenance, the costs—lost productivity, wasted wages, project delays—can be significant.

A third-party onsite fleet maintenance provider with deep experience in equipment maintenance can customize a well-defined preventive maintenance program that guards against unplanned downtime. Because well-maintained equipment is less likely to break and lasts longer, timely preventive maintenance also reduces repair costs and protects your investment.

An onsite provider will take care of standard unplanned repairs and warranty work in addition to preventive maintenance. That eliminates any worry about transporting equipment offsite or finding a qualified mechanic on short notice.

2. Just-in time preventive maintenance

The United Rentals onsite team can leverage Total Control^®, United Rentals’ cloud-based fleet management software, to access odometer readings or engine hours on telematics-enabled equipment and use this data to perform just-in-time maintenance. Unlike calendar-based maintenance, just-in-time maintenance helps ensure that equipment isn’t under-maintained or over-maintained, which increases safety and often reduces costs. Total Control also enables work order processing and service alerts.

3. Timely equipment inspections

Companies with large fleets often struggle to keep up with equipment inspections required by OHSA and ANSI, especially when aerial lifts and other machinery are spread out over a massive site. But failure to perform aerial lift inspections or inspect other heavy equipment such as cranes on schedule can result in fines, not to mention the risk of a serious accident. A third-party equipment maintenance service can take over inspections and ensure that your company remains in compliance.

4. Cost-efficient parts management

Maintaining a large, varied fleet requires effectively managing the parts and materials needed to service and repair emergency vehicles, cranes, and other critical assets. Companies tend to overstock parts “just in case,” especially given recent supply chain shortages, but just-in-time parts purchase and delivery can be more efficient and economical.

United Rentals makes a just-in-time approach to parts possible thanks to its large national footprint and longstanding relationships with OEM dealers and alliance vendors. It gathers and analyzes equipment and maintenance data to determine the need for specific parts. It also routinely evaluates the parts inventory to identify active and obsolete parts. Storing obsolete parts wastes both money and space. United Rentals’ onsite teams typically run a deadstock inventory of less than 1%.

5. Optimized utilization

Keeping track of all the equipment on a large site can be a daunting task. “Hidden” or hoarded equipment commonly leads to underutilization and over-fleeting. Right-sizing a fleet is especially tricky when success depends on different teams sharing information about what equipment is onsite and where it is located.

United Rentals’ onsite team utilizes Total Control to track all the telematics-enabled owned and rented equipment on a site so companies can find their equipment quickly and easily and no equipment goes to waste.

6. Reduced total cost of ownership

A large fleet is a major investment. Developing a clear, site-specific fleet strategy is essential not only to ensuring that workers have the equipment and vehicles they need but also to managing the total cost of ownership.

An experienced onsite team that handles fleet management as well as maintenance can perform equipment lifecycle planning based on the age, engine hours (or odometer readings) and maintenance history of each unit and advise you when to sell the equipment to maximize residual value. United Rentals can also help you determine when to rent equipment vs. owning it by calculating maintenance and operating costs, running utilization reports and leveraging proprietary benchmarking data. Renting equipment that is used infrequently or is costly to maintain lowers operating costs and preserves capital.

With the United Rentals onsite program, companies running large industrial or manufacturing sites get reliable support from an experienced team. The same systems, processes and expertise United Rentals applies to its own $14-billion fleet are used to maintain and manage your equipment and vehicles. By partnering with United Rentals, you can take yourself out of the complicated and time-consuming business of fleet maintenance and management, focus on running your worksite and save money in the process.

Contact United Rentals today to schedule a complimentary site assessment.