Machine hours across every distribution center

The dock equipment, scrubbers, tugs and trailers in your buildings run every day and report nothing. Fleet gives each one an hour meter that reads itself, turns those hours into scheduled service, and delivers the numbers into the maintenance system your team already runs.

The problem

At most multi-site operators, the newest machines report their own hours and everything else lives on a clipboard. The dock equipment, the floor scrubbers, the yard tugs, the trailers and dollies, the gensets and compressors — they run every shift, and the only record of how hard they ran is somebody’s memory of it.

That leaves preventive maintenance running on a guess. The 250-hour service happens whenever someone notices. A machine that sat all winter gets its inspection on time while the one that ran every day waits its turn. And the maintenance system you already pay for is only ever as good as the hours somebody typed into it.

Traditional telematics doesn’t fix this. It is built for vehicles with an engine computer to plug into, and priced per asset per month for a cellular connection this equipment doesn’t need. Most operators end up stuck between spreadsheets and a system that is overkill for gear that never leaves the property.

What we built

A deployment across the distribution centers of a Fortune 500 aftermarket auto-parts distributor — 483 tracked assets across eight sites, running since 2022.

• A sealed tag on each machine. It counts run-time on the machine itself and broadcasts the running total. Nothing wired into the equipment, no engine computer required, nothing for an operator to remember to do.
• Readers at every site pick up those broadcasts and pass them on. When a building loses its connection they hold the readings and send them when it comes back.
• An hour meter that reads itself. Hours accrue per asset continuously, with a full history — and an audit trail on every correction anyone makes by hand.
• Service schedules that watch the meter. Every 250 hours, every 6 months, or whichever comes due first. When one does, Fleet writes the order with its checklist, assignee and due date, and emails the owner.
• The numbers land where maintenance already lives. Scheduled CSV by email or SFTP, on the schedule you set, so hours arrive in the system your team already runs instead of being retyped into it.

The outcome

• Every machine has hours, not just the new ones. The gear that never had a meter has one now, and it is the same number the maintenance system sees.
• Service lands on the interval. The schedule watches the meter, so a job comes due when the machine has earned it — not when someone notices.
• Idle equipment stops hiding. Utilization across every site shows what is working and what is parked, so a shortage at one building can be solved by moving a machine rather than buying one.
• A machine that stops reporting gets flagged — not discovered three weeks later when somebody goes looking for it.
• The maintenance system stays fed. No monthly export, no retyping, no one’s calendar reminder holding it together.

Hours are the part most fleets can’t get off this equipment. Location isn’t utilization is why we lead with them.