The daily walkaround check catches what is wrong at 6am. It does not catch the brake that starts to squeal at 11, the warning light that comes on at the third drop or the tail lift that sticks after lunch. Those faults are found by the driver, mid-route, who either remembers to tell someone at the end of the day, or doesn't.
What a good fault report captures
The driver is the only person who knows the details, and they are busy. The report should be quick, but it should capture:
- Where on the vehicle, from a short list: brakes, tyres and wheels, lights, engine, cab, bodywork, windscreen and mirrors, tail lift, refrigeration unit.
- What is wrong, in a line, plus optional detail on when it started and when it happens.
- How serious it is: can wait, fix soon or urgent.
- Whether the vehicle can still be driven. This is the most important answer for the office.
- Photos of the fault.
- The mileage, in miles or kilometres, as drivers read it.
What the office needs in return
The driver gives what they can. The office adds what only the office can:
- which garage or workshop will do the work,
- the date it is booked for,
- the cost and any parts.
So the report should become a maintenance job straight away, with the driver's details filled in and the garage and date left for the office. There is no re-typing from a note, and nothing falls between "told the transport manager" and "someone booked it".
Always record who and when
Every maintenance job should show who created it and when, whether it came from a driver on the road or a planner at a desk. When a fault is argued about later ("nobody told us"), the job's creator and time answer it. It also shows you which drivers are good at reporting, which is useful in itself.
Tell the right people, and don't cry wolf
A fault that can still be driven is a job. A fault that cannot be driven is an alert. The people who need to know about an urgent report should be emailed straight away, while minor reports appear in the app without a message. In Fleetnyx the people you choose for each alert are set under alert emails.
Whether to take the vehicle off the road is a decision for the office or the workshop, not an automatic consequence of one tap. Dangerous defects found on the walkaround check do take a vehicle off the road. A mid-route report creates the job and the alert, and leaves the decision to a person.
In Fleetnyx
In the driver app, the wrench button on every screen opens "Report a vehicle problem" for the vehicle on today's route. It creates a maintenance job marked as created by that driver, with the time, the area, the severity and whether the vehicle can be driven. The photos attach to the job. The office opens it from the maintenance jobs list, sees a banner at the top with who reported it and when, and books the garage and date. Read more under vehicle maintenance.
For a crash rather than a fault, there is a separate accident report, which captures the other party's details and their insurance.