M. Pittman Uses App to Take Guessing Game out of Fleet Maintenance

What began in 1999 with a single truck out of Manassas, Virginia, owner Mike Pittman has rapidly expanded the company’s footprint in the world of petroleum carriers. In the past 21 years, his company, M. Pittman Enterprises, has expanded to loading, transportation, delivery and disposal, all thanks to a reputation of excellent customer service and going above and beyond.

With locations along the Mid-Atlantic spanning from Maryland to South Florida, the organization has grown to over 100 drivers and pieces of equipment.

Life Before Whip Around

Having their maintenance department in Northern Virginia, managing all of their trucks and trailers, including their preventative maintenance needs proved to be a challenge with a process largely dependent on paper and manual reminders.

One of their biggest pain points was having to guess when preventative maintenance would be due for a truck, and not having access to that type of information when they needed it. That all changed thanks to using the Whip Around app for driver inspections and their maintenance process.

Pen, Paper, and Outlook Reminders

Steve Paroda, Managing Director at M. Pittman had this to say about their previous process:

“Prior to having Whip Around, we did everything maintenance-wise on [a mechanic’s] schedule, and would have to reach out and see when the last PM was done. It was kind of a combination of pen and paper, and Outlook reminders.”

Since chasing things down between drivers and mechanics was becoming a hassle, the team turned to Whip Around for a better solution.

Paper work orders and DVIR forms were also becoming a hassle to deal with in so many locations, which is another benefit the Whip Around app offered on day one with its industry-leading DVIR solution.

Since Implementing Whip Around

By proactively tracking things like vehicle mileage, faults, and other inspection-related items on a routine basis, Whip Around has made it possible for managers to follow up immediately in the event of a missed inspection by drivers, as well as track and access the status of routine preventative maintenance tasks or repairs.

By using an alert-based system like Whip Around, it allows his team to be more proactive in scheduling service by using data to make these decisions.

Streamlining Preventative Maintenance with Service Schedules and Work Order Creation

An important benefit of using Whip Around’s Service Schedule functionality, is that mechanics are able to set alerts in the platform, keeping both dispatch and drivers in the loop whenever preventative maintenance is due based on vehicle mileage.

“With Whip Around’s Service Schedule, we’re able to go in and schedule service for our fleet, and we get notified when a truck is coming due for service, so that’s been a big help with scheduling” said Victor Barrios, Terminal Manager in the company’s Charlotte office.

For non-maintenance related repairs, faults can also be grouped together before creating work orders which helps their maintenance team further streamline their workload.

Whip Around gives managers the ability to create and send work orders digitally to mechanics whenever a fault is reported, or maintenance reminder appears on the Whip Around Dashboard.

Avoiding Costs Associated with Unnecessary Maintenance

Paroda also explained how getting his team onboarded with the Whip Around app is leading to other benefits for the company, like saving time in unnecessary preventative maintenance.

“In the past, it was: rush to get something done if it was over—or you would look at it and say, it’s been a couple months, what are your miles at?” he stated, noting that many vehicles didn’t always need to be serviced.

By taking the guessing game out completely, Whip Around has led to a much more consistent preventative maintenance process for the entire fleet, and keep their entire team communicating and accountable.

Get Started Using Whip Around

To explore how Whip Around is making both inspections and maintenance more streamlined for thousands of businesses, book a demo today or start your free trial of Whip Around.

Many customers like iShuttle are reducing fleet maintenance costs by more than 20 percent by eliminated undocumented damage, and addressing small issues before they lead to more expensive problems.