Fleet maintenance for trades companies — your vans, serviced at the shop, ready by 7 a.m.
A trades van that doesn't start costs you a crew, a booked job, and a customer who called someone else. I service your vans at your own yard — evenings and weekends, around on-call schedules — with published per-van pricing and a photo condition report on every unit.
What trades duty actually does to a van
Idle hours cook cooling systems
Trades vans idle at job sites for hours — running inverters, warming up, powering the job. That's brutal on cooling systems and it never shows on the odometer. I check the cooling system every visit because a $30 hose caught early beats a cooked engine mid-January.
Standing load never comes out
Racking, pipe, wire spools, compressors — your vans carry near their rating every single day, parked or driving. Rear springs, shocks and brakes wear on a schedule the owner's manual never imagined. The inspection catches it while it's cheap.
Batteries run the business, not just the van
Chargers, power tools topping up, work lights, that inverter someone hardwired in 2023 — trades vans drain batteries in ways commuter cars never do. Battery and charging health gets tested at every PM visit; winter finds every marginal battery at the worst moment otherwise.
One van down = one crew down
You don't lose a vehicle, you lose a revenue-producing crew and the day's booked jobs. The whole point of yard-based PM is that the failure gets caught in your parking lot on a Tuesday evening instead of in a customer's driveway Wednesday morning.
How a trades yard day runs
- Evenings and weekends at your shop — vans get serviced while crews are off, ready before the 7 a.m. roll-out
- Full PM per unit: synthetic oil & filter, 50-point photo inspection, fluids, tires logged, battery and charging test
- On-call van? I sequence it first, or catch it next visit — the schedule works around your dispatch reality
- Pickups and personal-use crossovers on the company plan welcome — one vendor, one invoice, every vehicle documented
- Repairs approved by photo + flat price get done the same visit at fleet rates — no second trip, no shop drop-off
Plumbing, HVAC, electrical, restoration, property maintenance — if your company's trucks are how the work shows up, then vehicle downtime is customer-facing downtime. The shop model was built for people with a spare car. Your operation doesn't have spare crews.
I run the same trust rules for fleets as for my consumer work: flat price in writing before any wrench, photos of what I found, and an honest call on what's urgent versus what's a next-quarter item. Your service manager gets a per-unit report after every visit — which, for the record, is also the documented maintenance program Ontario expects commercial operators to run.
Most GTA-West trades yards — Mississauga's industrial strips, Speers Road in Oakville, Milton's new-build belt, Brampton, north Etobicoke — are inside my regular loop. Weekly, biweekly or quarterly cadence, set per fleet at the free yard assessment.
FAQ
Two of our vans are basically parked at a long-term job site — can you service them there?
We've got a mix — vans, a couple pickups, the owner's SUV. All on one plan?
What about winter? That's when we can't afford a dead van.
Free yard assessment — exact program price, in writing
I walk your lot, condition-report up to 3 units free, log every unit’s weight class, and price your fleet off the published rate card. No commitment — worst case you keep the reports.
Get your fleet number