How AI-Powered Fleet Maintenance Lowers TCO
AI-powered, integrated fleet maintenance systems help fleets lower total operating costs by reducing downtime, automating workflows, improving fault-code diagnostics, and enabling proactive maintenance decisions.
Episode 380: In this episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report, host Jamie Irvine speaks with Sri Kolluri, Product Lead at Motive, about how AI-powered maintenance solutions can help fleets reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).
The discussion highlights how rising parts costs, emergency breakdowns, and vehicle downtime significantly increase operating expenses, with emergency repairs costing up to nine times more than planned maintenance and downtime creating substantial hidden costs.
Sri explains that many fleets struggle with disconnected systems for telematics, inspections, maintenance, and work orders, resulting in wasted administrative time and limited visibility. Motive addresses these challenges by integrating vehicle data, inspections, fault codes, maintenance schedules, and work orders into a single platform that prioritizes repairs, automates workflows, and provides AI-driven fault code analysis in plain language. This enables fleets to shift from reactive maintenance to proactive decision-making, reduce downtime, improve technician productivity, gain better insight into vehicle lifecycle costs, and make more informed maintenance and replacement decisions.
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Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine
Welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. My name is Jamie Irvine and in this episode we’re going to talk about how AI-powered fleet maintenance lowers total cost of operation and to have that conversation. I’m very excited to introduce my guest today, Sri Kolluri. He is the Product Lead at Motive. Sri, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.
Sri Kolluri
Yeah, excited to be here and talk about maintenance.
Jamie Irvine
So Motive’s research found that 80% of fleet professionals have identified rising maintenance costs as their biggest operational challenge. From your perspective, Sri, what’s driving the increasing costs?
Sri Kolluri
Yeah, there are two major factors that are driving costs, right? One is this general due to the economy, this general rise in parts cost, which is in turn leading to increase in the repair costs overall. And the other element of the cost is also just the fact that your emergency breakdowns and unexpected downtime contributes majorly to the maintenance cost in general.
Jamie Irvine
Right. So the parts cost, I understand it’s a variable cost, but in some ways there’s a fixed component to it. I think what a lot of people don’t see on the bill is the full cost of that breakdown. Walk us through from your perspective what that true cost is.
Sri Kolluri
So there are again, two elements to this as well, right? So if you look at the general cost of an emergency repair, it’s 8 to 9 times higher than a regular maintenance. That itself is steep. And now when you look at the other aspect, which is when your vehicle is down, essentially that’s also lost productivity. And a report also talks about it. If you estimate that cost, that cost almost lands at almost $760 per day per vehicle. And if you look at the average downtime per vehicle per year, and that’s almost eight to nine days, and if you extrapolate that to a fleet that has thousand vehicles, that’s almost $4 million. So that’s a huge number which is hidden, right?
Jamie Irvine
It doesn’t just show up on an invoice like a part does, right? The parts you can look at and you can see the cost on the invoice and be like, okay, I know what that cost is. One of the most interesting points in the research that your company has put out is that only 13% of fleets say their technology systems are well integrated. So let’s talk about those disconnected systems, that lack of integration, and what is that doing to drive up operational costs.
Sri Kolluri
Absolutely. So what’s happening today is if you look at how an average fleet operates, they use a different solution for ELD and telematics. They use a different solution for their maintenance and inspections. So what’s now happening is you have your data around your vehicle and the data on what’s happening on the road in a different system. And then there’s the data around what’s happening on the shop in a different system. So these are now disconnected. On an average, the same report also talks about almost 50% of fleets actually spend almost 20 hours in just manually considering this data, which is downloading data from one system and uploading to another. And as you just said, right, 13% of them only claim that they have a well integrated system, so that’s almost the seven, 8 fleets do not have a well-integrated system. So they’re manually doing a data download and data dump and wasting all those admin hours purely in just data churn.
Jamie Irvine
So did I hear you correctly? You said that on average, you’re spending 20 man hours a week, or is that a month?
Sri Kolluri
20 hours a week.
Jamie Irvine
A week, just lost productivity, just man hours spent on admin. Okay. And I guess too, the other thing is that as soon as you introduce any kind of manual data input, you also have the opportunity for that data to be mistyped, mistakes are made. And so then data quality becomes an issue as well, I would assume.
Sri Kolluri
Exactly, yeah. I think manual data comes with all sorts of problems, right? You have human errors that come in and then you cannot build well-supported automations on top of it. There’s a whole lot of things that you lose out when you don’t have data in a single system. Manual errors, integrated automations, all of that is something that you miss out when you have data in different systems.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, and the other thing is, that the contribution that those individuals that are doing something that an automated system could do is lost as well. And I think that’s invisible to a lot of people. Like what could these talented people who know the industry be doing with their time if they weren’t spending that 20 hours a week doing data entry, which could be handled by a system?
Sri Kolluri
Exactly. I think and that’s where the whole automation piece comes in, right? The perspective that we have is automation takes out a lot of manual effort, but that entire manual effort basically comes into additional human creativity and also adding value to the job. So imagine a technician who spends their bench time, has more time to spend on the bench time, they’re able to do a lot more and do a better quality job as well.
Jamie Irvine
Just focusing their time on higher value tasks. So a lot of our listeners, they’re either on the parts side of the business, they’re on the service side of the business, and they’re spending most of their day just putting out fires, helping people solve problems, fix equipment, get back on the road. So how does your company help organizations shift from that more reactive approach, which has kind of been the way we’ve done it for so many decades, to a more proactive maintenance strategy.
Sri Kolluri
Essentially, the information that you have about a vehicle is what are the defects that my drivers are reporting as a part of their daily inspections? What are the faults that are coming in from telematics? And then what are my routine scheduled services? And these are today three different tabs that you are looking at and trying to figure out which vehicle should I prioritize, right? And what Motive Maintenance does, it brings all that information into a single window and ranks them automatically based on the criticality of the issues. So if you have a vehicle with major defects reported by the driver and a critical fault code that’s live, that vehicle is automatically on the top. So now you’re able to basically catch which vehicle should I address first before jumping into a different, just randomly like a needle in a haystack, right? So that’s automatic stack rank for you. That basically shifts you from a reactive monitoring to a proactive monitoring because now all the data is in front of you. So all that rich information is basically going to help you make the judgment call and should I repair this vehicle now or do I wait for a planned maintenance?
Jamie Irvine
Sri, over the years, admittedly, I’ve had companies come on to the show and talk about this more predictive, proactive world that we might be able to work in and the leveraging of technology. I’d like to get into more detail with you about how Motive is really offering something different to the market. So first of all, you’re using AI to kind of look at fault codes, right? And to translate complex fault codes. We did an episode not that long ago about shotgun repair where a technician is kind of guessing at the problem. So I assume that this AI analyzing the fault codes is helping to get to a root cause analysis. Talk to me about how this works and how this is differentiated in your offering from other providers.
Sri Kolluri
Unless you’re a seasoned technician who has seen a wide variety of codes, it’s very hard to remember what the code actually means, right? And there are multiple dimensions to it. What is the actual error happening and what do I need to do? Do I need to address this right now and can this wait for some more time? So it’s important to understand the description of what it is, what the problem is, what kind of solution do I need to apply and is it critical? Do I need to answer now or not? This is where basically Motive’s AI fault code comes in. We look at these codes, pass it through our system and basically attach a very clean, human readable description to it. So now you’re basically able to understand what the fault code means, right? You don’t have to guess based on the code or look up a manual. It’s directly in front of you. The second aspect also is what is sort of the description of it, which is what is the exact problem? So it’s not just the label of it, but also what does fault code actually imply to your vehicle? Does it need to be acted now or does it kind of wait for planned maintenance? And the third addition to this is the criticality. So if a fault code is critical, Let’s say there’s an engine oil pressure issue that’s really critical. You need to look at it ASAP. That’s going to be a critical fault code. You’re going to stop the vehicle on the road and figure out what’s happening there. But if there’s, let’s say, a low priority fault code coming in, that can always be addressed later when the vehicle is back to the yard.
Jamie Irvine
So does this replace the diagnostic tool that the technician is using then?
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So does this replace the diagnostic tool that the technician is using then?
Sri Kolluri
So in many ways it does. So what a technician typically needs is understand the exact root cause and the number of times the observations have happened and when was the fault code first occurring. So a lot of these rich insight basically comes in. And what it also helps you is Motive also gives you live location data so you can always go dig and identify where were these issues actually emit in. So it to a large degree replaces the need for a diagnostic tool. That being said, there are specialized capabilities these tools have, which we may not be supporting completely today. So I would not write them off today yet.
Jamie Irvine
When the platform connects all these things, so you have inspections, you’ve got fault codes, work orders, maintenance schedules, when it connects all of this into the single system, can you walk us through that kind of connected workflow again, just so that we have an understanding of how it’s going to help a fleet make better decisions and lower their total cost of operation?
Sri Kolluri
Sure. I think the primary challenge that we discussed, right, is data silos. You have all the data corresponding to the vehicle on the road and the inspection defects, the fault codes and schedules. And then you have the work orders and the maintenance operations on the other side. What we are doing by bridging both of these worlds is let’s say there’s a critical fault code that occurs on the road, right? That’s not just an alert that needs to go to the fleet manager to go and identify what’s happening. It also needs to be a prioritized work order on the shop side as well. They need to make room for that vehicle and ensure that it is addressed immediately. So what we do is by building this integrated platform and automations on top of it, the moment a critical fault code occurs, a work order is automatically created, and then your workflow starts from there. Now coming to the total cost of ownership piece, right? Once all of this work order data comes into the system, we also have fuel data coming from the Motive card and other information around the vehicle, its location, its age, and history, to combine all of that information together, And then you have rich insights into the vehicle’s cost profile over the years. How does it perform against other vehicles by cost per mile? And then also understand what are the components that are failing regularly and basically bringing all of the information together to basically make a decision, which is, should I replace this vehicle or should I continue to operate it?
Jamie Irvine
So if you were to install this system now and you have a lot of historical data. Without that history, we wouldn’t have baselines on some of those things, like what prior fuel consumption was and now what it is today. Is there a way to get that backlog of historical data into the system when they first onboard?
Sri Kolluri
Yeah, absolutely. So as a part of onboarding, and a lot of fleets have this challenge, right? They migrate from systems that they have been using for more than a few decades, right and they want to migrate to a new system, historical data is important. So this is where we have dedicated onboarding and implementation teams that help you to migrate all of the data to Motive in a way that makes sense to you and can work for you from day one.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, so this sounds like it’s kind of geared towards fleets that run their own repair shops. Is there an application where like an independent shop that’s managing multiple fleets as customers, is there like a function for them to use the system or is this really primarily just for fleets?
Sri Kolluri
This is primarily categorized towards fleets and Motive has been trying to solve the problem of fleets in all ways, right? Starting with driver safety, fleet management, workforce management, So we’re essentially trying to help organizations manage all these various aspects. Yeah, they’re not a shop facing platform as of now.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, got it, got it. Okay, so that helps me ask the next question. So a fleet will stock some parts in inventory, things that are common that they might be requiring in off hours when the parts distribution companies and the dealerships aren’t open. But the reality is the fleets often use their supplier partners who supply them with parts kind of as satellite warehouses. I imagine with bringing all these systems together and having so much rich data, you’d be able to build a better profile around what actual parts should be stocked. I mean, there’s always going to be things that are unexpected, but I would assume that this would give you a lot of rich data around what parts should be inventory to try to reduce costs. How does that work?
Sri Kolluri
I would say this is not something that we have yet, but what we do is we essentially have a model analytics platform, which basically takes in data across maintenance and other systems. So you can quickly basically understand the parts profile very easily through that, through a simple natural language query. So that helps you to understand these insights. But that’s definitely a good idea for our roadmap is to build a nice forecasting system for fleets that help understand which parts to stock the most.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, but at the minimum, it sounds like you’re able to triage the severity of the repairs that are coming up. And so at least then you’d be able to get ahead of what parts you’re going to need for upcoming repairs, especially if they’re quite severe.
Sri Kolluri
Absolutely. Yeah. So that information is available for you. So the moment you have work on a schedule, it contains information on what are the underlying issues. Am I resolving a windshield repair? Am I resolving a fault code related engine, right? All that rich information around the issues is available to the shop. So that in turn helps them to procure the right necessary parts. Do I have these parts in stock? Because the work order is scheduled to start, let’s say, day after tomorrow. Do I need to go ahead and order these parts immediately on an emergency?
Jamie Irvine
Right. And you know, I do a lot of work with my clients and they are, you know, they’re running repair shops. And one of the biggest complaints I get from technicians is whether or not the parts are available on time so that the repair can be done immediately, right? So when they end up waiting for parts, it’s a big problem. It slows everything down. It makes the shop less efficient. And this is the same issue that I think fleets have if they’re running their own repair shop, like in the examples we’re talking about. So that makes sense to me. There’s one thing I want to dig in a little deeper on before we conclude our conversation. A lot of times a fault code will alert you to an issue with a specific part. Let’s say we have a sensor not getting what it needs. But sometimes there are underlying or like upstream issues that are causing that situation to occur. How does the system understand root cause analysis and where you might have multiple upstream and downstream issues that are contributing to a specific fault code being triggered?
Sri Kolluri
Yeah, I think the best way to tie us to this is you have all the information sitting in one place, right? You have the fault code itself. And if let’s say there are multiple fault codes, including, like you said, the sequence of fault codes starts with something less critical and then more critical. So you have all the information sitting in a single place, and then you have concrete timestamps on when did this fault code start and how many observations have we seen? So the moment you have all of that information in place, you’re basically able to identify how is this issue progressing and have I seen this pattern in the past and then make a decision based on that.
Jamie Irvine
You know, if there’s one thing you want people to remember from today’s conversation, Sri, what’s that one thing?
Sri Kolluri
Yeah, I think I would say the biggest challenge fleets are facing today is struggling. They’re struggling with multiple disconnected systems and that’s where the whole maintenance solution that Motive is offering comes in, right? Everything is single page, the same platform that you use for fleet management now captures your work orders and your repair life cycles, warranty tracking, and also visibility, total cost of ownership. That visibility helps you both in terms of lost productivity that you’ll gain through automations. So I think that’s primarily what I want to share at the end is you’re looking at a well-integrated platform that helps you to solve end-to-end.
Jamie Irvine
You’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. My name is Jamie Irvine. We’ve been speaking with Sri Kolluri, product lead at Motive. To learn more about Motive, visit gomotive.com. Sri, thank you so much for being on the Heavy Duty Parts Report. I appreciate it.
Sri Kolluri
Thank you.
Jamie Irvine
And thank you for listening to our program. We have been publishing episodes for a number of years now, trying to get to the heart of how we can lower total cost of operation for fleets and for the trucking industry at large. So I appreciate your ongoing support. If you haven’t already, head over to heavydutypartsreport.com where you’ll be able to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. As always, I want to encourage you to be heavy duty.
