The year in review: 2024 maintenance trends and what’s ahead

“Truck maintenance keeps the supply chain moving,” says Brian Mulshine, senior director of product management for Trimble’s TMT Fleet Maintenance solution. And as customer expectations grow and transportation technologies have become more sophisticated, fleet maintenance has become even more critical. We recently spoke with Mulshine to discuss what’s hearing from carriers about their most pressing challenges—including rising costs—and how they’re preparing for 2025. 

Article Highlights:

• The increased complexity of vehicles and technologies has forced the industry to adopt new maintenance standards.
• Longer-lasting parts and consumables like new oil blends are becoming a higher priority for fleets and seeing more investment.
• Trimble has increased its focus on maintenance with a revamped Trimble TMT Advanced Road Call module for TMT Fleet Maintenance. 
• Alternative fuels, electric vehicles and a persistent technician shortage are big challenges that will force maintenance providers to adapt.

Need for standardization

Many fleets manage hundreds or even thousands of breakdown events a year, and nearly 80% of fleets use outsourced service providers for their maintenance needs, which can become a costly – but necessary – endeavor. Furthermore, a recent Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) study found that vehicle failure was a key factor in about 10% of truck crashes, with poor maintenance of brakes and tires being major factors.

As maintenance activities become more complex, it’s become increasingly important for the industry to use a consistent language to track fault codes and repairs. Mulshine is a member of the American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC), which works with leading trucking fleets, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), tech providers and other industry professionals to establish a standard VMRS Key Code that all fleets can use to code repairs.

Earlier this fall, TMC voted to approve the new VMRS Key Code 25, which Mulshine has been working on for the past several years.

“I’m really proud of this,” Mulshine said. “Once we get the same taxonomy for repairs, we can digitize it in order to do a handshake from a service center to an OEM vehicle manufacturer, to the fleet management system.”

“Our task force benchmarked the operator’s manuals from most vehicle and engine manufacturers and have been collaborating on standardizing what all these groups call a specific maintenance item,” Mulshine continued. After nearly three years of collaboration, he says the group recently approved the updated library of codes for all maintenance items, which can help optimize maintenance intervals and communicate more easily between fleet management systems and manufacturers when service is needed.

This foundational new key code, though it took time to evolve and adopt, will unlock many new opportunities, Mulshine added. “If you want to move somewhere, you have to invest in the future!”

Increasing Component Lifespans

One of the major maintenance trends that Mulshine is seeing across the industry is longer-lasting parts and consumables like oil, as a net positive for fleets.

“What’s exciting is most of the significant costs for maintenance are starting to see extended intervals,” he said. “Many of the components that require servicing are starting to pass the ‘first owner’ life – so the initial owner of the truck is not going to have to worry about some of these larger costs, like transmission drains, axle lube replacement or diesel particulate filters.”

While synthetic oil and synthetic blend oils can significantly extend the interval between oil changes, saving on maintenance costs and downtimes, there’s also a downside to their use, according to Mulshine. Some of these oils are proprietary blends that–because of their price or storage requirements–might not fit the bulk purchasing and tank storage practices fleets rely on to bring down costs and reduce maintenance complexity. 

“Every fleet needs to weigh the benefits and costs against one another. Premium oils offer many advantages that might be more important to a fleet than initial cost,” Mulshine says. “But regardless of how long maintenance intervals can safely be extended, nothing can replace rigorous, routine inspections.”

“You may not be changing the oil as frequently, but it’s still important that you’re doing a full inspection on the vehicle to check that all the seals, bearings, steering components, axles and more are in good working order,” he explained.

New Tools from Trimble

Another project Mulshine has been heavily involved with this year is the relaunch of the TMT Advanced Road Call module. The updated offering allows commercial fleets to get ahead of maintenance management by providing a cloud-based event workflow directly within TMT Fleet Maintenance. 

With it, carriers can spot disabled vehicles, determine the quickest, best service provider, and generate repairs orders within a single user, map-based experience. TMT Road Call also integrates with Trimble Places, providing instant access to an extensive network of external, local service providers to help trucks get back on the road after a breakdown.

“When a driver is in need of service, Road Call is able to get support for them quicker,” Mulshine explains.

Mulshine says another focus of his for 2025 is continuing work to more closely integrate fleet transportation management systems (TMS) with maintenance systems to provide enhanced visibility when maintenance is required on a vehicle – allowing fleets to schedule work during planned downtime rather than interrupting a driver’s daily schedule.

What’s Ahead

Looking to 2025 and beyond, Mulshine points to alternative fuels and electrification as major new maintenance topics that will increase complexity for repair shops.

“It’s going to drive new types of service and maintenance requirements that the industry is not ready for today,” Mulshine said. This complexity is compounded by the current, and likely continuing, shortage of skilled technicians who are trained and ready to work on vehicles with new engine types, like electric or liquid natural gas.

To address the shortage, he said maintenance providers are rethinking not only pay, but also other benefits and environmental factors. Are their shops comfortable places to work? Does the career offer upward mobility? We explore these questions and more in a recent article on the technician shortage.

“Many fleets are updating their facilities to include amenities like heated floors, air conditioning, and more,” Mulshine said. “Technicians are becoming more critical. Are they going to be proud to work in this shop environment?”

Beyond the shop, Mulshine also points to upcoming emissions restrictions and requirements as a major hurdle the industry will be grappling with in 2025, which will require technology providers to work closely together to ensure vehicle data, particularly from telematics devices, is being shared between solutions.

“It’s exciting the way we’re integrating across the ecosystem and making life easier for our fleets and drivers,” Mulshine concluded.

Contact our team to learn how Trimble’s fleet maintenance solutions can save your fleet time and money.