- New service turns distress vehicle SMR bookings into planned scheduled events.
- Connected vehicle data enables smarter SMR resource allocation and foresight.
- Uptime management set to become the fleet operator’s default.
Fleet Assist has announced the roll out of a new service that will deliver increased compliance, vehicle availability and productivity for its leasing and rental customers.
Called Uptime Management it focuses on delivering preventative and proactive compliance maintenance for fleets which avoid costly disruptive vehicle downtime and distress events.
For all types of fleet car, LCVs and trucks, this translates into more miles driven, more deliveries completed and fewer disruptions for end users through keeping vehicles legal and within manufacturer service requirements.
Fleet Assist’s ethos behind this new service is to help its customers move from managing vehicle failure to ensuring uptime becomes their default.
The service is powered Fleet Assist systems which harness a combination of continuous connected vehicle and other reference data points to analyse and optimise vehicle maintenance schedules effectively.
This is combined with Fleet Assist’s dedicated uptime team who contact drivers to proactively get their vehicles serviced, MOT’d or repaired by leveraging its nationwide garage network.
In the event of a vehicle being off the road, Fleet Assist proactively chases the work jobs to completion and in the event of parts delays suggests alternative parts suppliers and where necessary provide drivers with a hire vehicle from their chosen supplier. The Fleet Assist team’s main aim is to get the vehicle back on the road quickly.
“Uptime management has emerged as a critical strategy to maximise fleet productivity by turning maintenance from a reactive distress into a strategic advantage,” explained Garry Winckley, Fleet Assist’s business development director.
“We rely on proactive service scheduling, remote diagnostics, and predictive insights to help identify and resolve issues early. A well‑maintained vehicle is a safe compliant vehicle for drivers and operators,” he added.
Fleet Assist has experience of providing uptime management to fleets running several thousand vehicles during 2025. Anecdotally user cases have seen, vehicles with known issues being proactively booked in for service ahead of the manufacturer guidelines, avoiding both unplanned breakdowns and customer operational challenges. Additionally, fleets have seen compliance levels increase dramatically to near 100% and downtime reduced by over 50%.
“Uptime is the new downtime. By using all the data sources available to us enables faster and more effective vehicle triage decisions together with more efficient integration with the fleet SMR supply chain,” said Winckley.
