Plan for Growth Before It Overwhelms Your Fleet

When you’re busy running a small fleet, how you’ll manage your vehicles after they’ve increased tenfold is probably the last thing on your mind. But, even if such expansion feels impossible today, considering what your organization’s needs might be in five or 10 years can spare you from growing pains down the road.

Simply put, it’s never “too early” or “too optimistic” to start planning ahead for your fleet’s future.

Creative MultiCare is living proof of that principle. What began with a handful of hard-working folks getting together in 1992 has become a multi-state provider of plumbing, resurfacing and floor care services. With its fleet of around 600 light- and medium-duty vehicles, the company is an indispensable partner to apartment owners throughout the Southeast.

Today, Creative MultiCare manages its vehicle maintenance, costs and part inventories with ease, but that wasn’t always the case. Here’s how the company went from struggling with disjointed software to unifying their operations under a single source of truth with Fleetio:

More software, more problems

Our fleet process, prior to adopting Fleetio, was a hodgepodge of different software packages. There was never a complete solution that we found to fit our maintenance needs. David Bernier, Fleet Manager at Creative MultiCare

Back in the day, as Creative MultiCare expanded, so did its tech stack. At one point, the company was using three or four disparate software solutions to manage their operations. And while those tools worked well enough at first, much like a hermit crab outgrowing its shell, Creative MultiCare eventually began to feel their limitations. Keeping all those systems up to date became a major hassle that distracted its personnel from vital responsibilities.

It wasn’t bad when the fleet was small and you had a couple of processes that you had to go through. Once the fleet grew in size… it was really laborious at that point in time. David Bernier, Fleet Manager at Creative MultiCare

For years, the company endured the demands of their bloated tech stack. But, after the company acquired their maintenance facility in Atlanta, the Creative MultiCare team realized they needed a more cohesive system for managing their fleet operations.

Fleetio: An integrated, scalable solution

By replacing its previous software with Fleetio, Creative Multicare managed to dramatically streamline how it keeps tabs on its assets and operations. Within a single platform, the Creative MultiCare team is able to check vehicle histories, delegate work to technicians, bring in data from other fleet systems, and, crucially, run reports. Tracking expenses used to be very cumbersome for the company, but, today, Creative MultiCare has complete visibility over their costs (at individual branches and across their business).

Being able to have a one-stop solution to be able to go in, open up my computer and get all the data that’s needed out of one software system has increased my productivity tenfold. David Bernier, Fleet Manager at Creative MultiCare

The organization Fleetio provides has also enabled Creative MultiCare to more tightly manage its part inventory. To support the maintenance needs of its assets, the company regularly keeps around $250,000 worth of parts on hand. But, despite their best efforts, parts would inevitably go missing with their old tech stack. Fortunately, with Fleetio, such losses have been significantly reduced. Fleetio’s support for barcode scanning allows technicians to log their part usage quickly, without errors.

But, perhaps most importantly, Fleetio has provided Creative MultiCare with a foundation to support its future growth. Some of the companies acquired by Creative MultiCare never had a fleet management system (FMS). But, thanks to Fleetio’s user-friendly design, newly onboarded personnel are able to get up to speed with the system in little time. This has enabled Fleetio to unify all of Creative MultiCare’s locations under one roof, and will facilitate the smooth integration of future acquisitions later down the road.

We believe that, with Fleetio, we have a system in place that’s gonna grow with us as our company grows. David Bernier, Fleet Manager at Creative MultiCare

Takeaways for Fleets

In the end, after years of struggling with inadequate solutions, Creative MultiCare discovered its “forever FMS” in Fleetio. You could say that things worked out in the end, but only after the company’s frustrations reached a breaking point. But, the truth is, most of those headaches could’ve been avoided.

By picking an FMS capable of scaling alongside your business, you’ll never have to worry about outgrowing your tech stack. No matter the size of your fleet or your current ambitions, accounting for possible expansion today can make managing your operations in the future a whole lot easier. And it’s not putting the cart before the horse to consider what your fleet might need in the future—it’s simply pragmatic.

Back in 1992, the founders of Creative Multicare might not have envisioned their operations ever expanding beyond Atlanta. But, in time, their hard work paid off and now they have four locations between Georgia and Florida. The pace of their success took them by surprise, but other fleets can use their journey to help make them prepare for the future at more early stages.

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