On-Site vs Shop Maintenance: Time and Cost Comparison

Week 3 · On-site service · Time savings

When we talk to fleet managers, the repair itself usually isn’t the biggest pain. It’s everything around it: finding a driver to shuttle the unit, sitting in a waiting room, waiting on a call, and then trying to work that unit back into the lineup.

A typical shop PM day

Let’s say you run a small fleet and need three trucks in for PM. A shop visit usually looks like:

• Driver takes truck to shop (30–60 minutes each way).
• Unit sits in the lot until a bay opens up.
• PM is completed, plus any add-ons or surprises.
• Someone has to go back, pick the truck up, and return it to the yard.

Even if the PM only takes 2–3 hours of labor, the unit can easily be gone most of the day, and your people lose several hours just moving it around.

An on-site PM day in your yard

Now compare that to an on-site PM day:

• We arrive at your yard with a planned list of units.
• Drivers park units in a designated row or area.
• We work down the list, one unit at a time.
• Drivers stay available for their routes or other work.

Instead of your people chasing the shop, the work comes to where the trucks already are.

Where the real savings show up

The savings show up in:

• Driver time: Less unpaid shuttle driving.
• Downtime: Units can often be scheduled around your slowest windows.
• Planning: You know which units are being hit, and when, ahead of time.

When a shop still makes sense

There will always be work that belongs in a brick-and-mortar shop: major engine work, alignments, frame damage, and some warranty repairs. We’re not here to replace every shop—you still need those partners.

But for PMs, inspections, and a big chunk of your repair list, on-site service can reclaim a lot of wasted time without sacrificing quality.

Want to see it in your numbers?

If you’d like to compare on-site versus shop time for your fleet, we can sit down with your routes, units, and current PM schedule and walk through a simple model.