Preventive maintenance for buses and coaches: by date and by kilometres

Preventive maintenance of a bus is organised around two clocks: the calendar and the odometer. Each service is scheduled by date, by kilometres, or by whichever comes first, using the intervals the manufacturer sets for that model and that kind of use, and the next one is noted down when the previous one is closed. What is not written down, nobody keeps an eye on.

Here is how to set up that plan without inventing figures, what to record for each intervention and how Bus Center monitors services, by date and by kilometres, on each coach's record.

By date and by kilometres

Some services depend on time and others on use, and a serious plan watches both. A coach that covers many kilometres in summer reaches its kilometre-based service sooner than its date-based one; one that sits for weeks in the depot, the other way round.

The intervals are not invented by the office: they come from the maintenance plan of the vehicle's and its components' manufacturer, and from the workshop's judgement according to how each coach is used. That is why this article gives no figures: the right one is the one the manufacturer sets for your model.

What is in the office's hands is making sure every service has its date or its kilometres noted down, and that someone looks at those dates before they pass. A service that lives only in a notebook depends on someone opening the notebook in time.

The ITV (Spain's mandatory roadworthiness inspection) is something else: its frequency is set by regulation and does not depend on the manufacturer. We explain it in the ITV for buses.

What to record for each intervention

For each service or repair, record at least what lets you know afterwards what was done, when, at how many kilometres and when the next one is due. A practical list:

• The date of the intervention and the odometer reading that day.
• The type: scheduled service or repair.
• What was done, in one sentence.
• The workshop and the cost.
• The next service, by date, by kilometres or by both.
• The workshop invoice, kept with the coach.

In Bus Center each maintenance entry is saved on the coach's record with its date, type, a description, the kilometres, the cost and the workshop, the next service by date and by kilometres, and its status: done, scheduled or pending. Invoices and other papers go into the vehicle's documents.

The status helps you stay organised. You can mark as scheduled a service that already has a workshop appointment and leave as pending one that does not yet; reviewing the pending ones once a week stops a service from going without an appointment. And one habit that saves trouble: when you close a service, note the next one straight away, by date and by kilometres.

The kilometre alert

Bus Center also monitors maintenance by kilometres: it warns you when 5,000 km or fewer remain before the service. If it has already been passed, the alert shows as overdue.

To do that it needs to know how many kilometres the coach has done. It takes them from data the office already records: the odometer reading at each refuel updates the vehicle's kilometres if it has gone up, and so do the kilometres of a registered ITV. If a coach has no kilometres recorded, the kilometre alert cannot trigger, because there is nothing to compare against.

An example: a coach's next service is noted at a certain kilometre figure, and the latest refuel puts its odometer less than 5,000 km from it. From that moment the alert appears on the dashboard, with the kilometres remaining; if it is passed, it says by how much.

Recording the odometer at every refuel therefore serves two purposes: the maintenance alert and the coach's fuel consumption, which we cover in fleet fuel tracking.

The date alert

By date, maintenance goes into the same dashboard as the rest of the expiry dates. The dashboard gathers whatever expires in 30 days or less: the ITV, maintenance and insurance of the coaches, and the licence, CAP (Spain's driver certificate of professional competence) and tachograph card of the drivers.

Each alert shows as overdue, urgent if 15 days or fewer remain, or warning, and they are seen on the dashboard. That way a coach's service competes in the same list as the ITV of the one next to it or a driver's CAP, and you plan with everything in front of you. We explain how that dashboard works in fleet expiry date tracking.

The history on the coach record

Each coach's record gathers its history: the ITV and maintenance, fuel and kilometres, and the vehicle's documents. It is what you want to have to hand when a coach starts giving trouble, when you discuss a repair with the workshop or when the time comes to sell it.

A complete history also helps with decisions: if a coach piles up repairs, it shows on its record, with their dates, kilometres and costs. You have the summary of the record in the Bus Center features (in Spanish).

What Bus Center does not do

Bus Center does not know your coach manufacturer's plan: you set the intervals. It does not read the odometer by itself, because it has no GPS or fleet tracking; the kilometres come from what is recorded. And the alerts are seen on the dashboard, so someone has to look at it.