Think that lease/rental and service are two unrelated businesses? Think again. The lease/rental business is the service business.
In the end, uptime is all that concerns customers. Units that are not in peak operating condition impact an end user’s ability to collect revenue and end up being little but a source of expense for the owning party.
This is why tracking repairs is a key component in any successful lease/rental business. With increased electronic componentry, tracking regular preventive maintenance, as well as scheduled and unscheduled repairs, is a must.
Simply put, anticipating component failure and tracking all historic, current, and future repairs is the best way to keep maintenance costs in line with rate sheets, as how customers rate their contracts needs to parallel or exceed the actual maintenance costs.
Don’t just stop there, though. Additionally, warrantable failures have to be tracked in order to take
advantage of any warranty available. Do not overlook the importance of tracking damage to lease and rental units using pictures and customer communication documentation for future rebills or insurance claims, either.
Downtime can be manageable and lessened with access to accurate service history, and with the large number of different drivers a rental fleet has in their units over time, tracking damage can be both an expense reduction and profit center.
About Allison Laing
Allison Laing joined Karmak in October of 2016 as a Lease/Rental Product Advisor. Laing has an extensive background in the heavy-duty leasing and rental market space. A Dealer Principle of Cooper Kenworth, Laing started Cooper Leasing in 1982, and over thirty years, grew the leasing business from 10 to 1000 units. Laing also spent time as a member of the PACCAR ITAG (Information Technology Advisory Group) and as a member of Truck Rental and Leasing Association. Laing was a longtime Karmak customer, having been on Karmak Legend since 1995.
About Karmak
Serving more than 1,500 locations across North America, Karmak is a leading provider of business management solutions in the heavy-duty industry.
Karmak’s flagship Windows-based product, Fusion, is designed specifically for the heavy-duty industry and is built to handle all of the varied demands of operating a fullservice business. To learn more, visit