Case Studies

When Josh Wykel joined VLS Environmental Solutions, managing maintenance across nearly 60 sites meant piecing together answers from spreadsheets, paper records and systems teams rarely used. To understand PM compliance or asset condition, he sometimes had to rely on site visits and stacks of paperwork.

Fleetio changed that by centralizing maintenance records, inspections, service history, fuel data and lifecycle information, giving Josh and his teams a clearer way to manage nearly 2,000 assets across the U.S. and Mexico. That visibility is now helping VLS improve PM compliance, evaluate outsourced maintenance spend and make higher-confidence repair-versus-replace decisions across a rapidly growing operation.

Getting Answers Without Flying to Find Them

VLS Environmental Solutions operates a complex fleet that includes class 8 trucks, trailers, roll-off trucks and yellow iron equipment used in landfill and environmental operations across North America. As Senior Fleet Maintenance Advisor, Josh oversees maintenance operations across the company’s expanding footprint. But before Fleetio, getting a reliable picture of fleet health was difficult. Some locations still relied on paper, while others used spreadsheets. The company had also implemented a maintenance platform that was difficult for teams to adopt consistently.

“With trying to manage a fleet across the country and into Tijuana, it’s kind of hard for me to know what’s going on. I’d have to fly up there and look through stacks of paper to figure out where they stood on PM compliance.” Josh Wykel, Senior Fleet Maintenance Advisor

That lack of visibility created operational friction everywhere. Preventive maintenance (PM) compliance was difficult to verify across sites and DOT inspection records were fragmented. Repair history was inconsistent, outsourced maintenance costs were harder to track and newly acquired sites lacked standardized processes. For a company growing through acquisitions, the problem became harder to ignore with every new location added.

Growth Made the Visibility Gap Harder to Ignore

Before Fleetio, VLS struggled with a common problem in distributed fleet operations: the data existed, but nobody trusted how complete or accessible it was. Josh had experience with fleet management systems and initially chose another platform because it was similar to what he had used before. However, the experience quickly fell short. The system was difficult to use, with frequent lag and login issues that discouraged adoption across teams. As a result, critical maintenance data wasn’t consistently captured, making it challenging to manage compliance, plan asset lifecycles, and make informed replacement decisions at scale. Fleetio stood out right away because it was intuitive and easy to use. Mechanics, managers and regional teams could navigate the platform with little to no training, driving stronger adoption and more reliable data across the organization.

"As soon as I got the demo and started seeing how it was set up, I was like, this is user-friendly. I figured it out without having training, like just playing around with it. So, very easy to use, and we were able to set up some parameters in there for PMs and things along those lines. It's helping us track everything as we stand now. And then we started using the Maintenance Shop Network [and] that's been a really big help.” Josh Wykel, Senior Fleet Maintenance Advisor

Fleetio Turned Maintenance History Into Decision-ready Data

Once Fleetio became the centralized system for maintenance operations, Josh and his team were able to layer in fleet data from different sources and view and plan their fleet operation in one place. VLS connected Fleetio with their telematics and WEX so inspections, fuel activity and maintenance records could flow together automatically. The company also rolled out Fleetio Go mobile for yellow iron inspections and barcode-based workflows.

That visibility gave VLS trusted operational data that teams could use to make financial decisions. One of the clearest examples came from a roll-off truck that needed a new engine. Under normal circumstances, replacing the truck might have seemed like the obvious move. A new roll-off truck can cost roughly $600,000. But Josh used Fleetio to dig deeper into the asset’s history, and instead of creating an unplanned capital expense, VLS chose to refurbish the truck and expects to get at least three more years out of it.

“I was able to pull the utilization for the truck, and it was utilized 1,300 miles a day over the past year. However, in the last three years, including this year, we had only spent $84,000 dollars in repairs on it. After making this engine repair, we would only spend $140k.” Josh Wykel, Senior Fleet Maintenance Advisor

By choosing refurbishment instead of replacement, VLS avoided approximately $540,000 in unbudgeted capital spend. Compared against an annual Fleetio investment of approximately $119,070, the identified $272,000 – $581,000 in annual cost-reduction opportunities represent an estimated 2.3 - 4.9x return on investment. That’s the kind of decision Josh says Fleetio now helps the company make with confidence.

“This is going to be our sole source of information on our equipment.” Josh Wykel, Senior Fleet Maintenance Advisor

The Moment Data Changed the Decision

While visibility was a major operational shift for VLS, so was behavior. Before Fleetio, repair decisions often happened reactively, and teams fixed equipment because they had to keep operations moving. Now, maintenance history, lifecycle data, utilization and repair costs are all visible in one place, making it easier for teams to pause and evaluate the bigger financial picture. Instead of automatically approving expensive repairs, VLS now asks and can see:

• How much have we spent on this unit already?
• How heavily is it utilized?
• What is the replacement cost?
• Does repair still create positive ROI?

That same visibility is now helping Josh evaluate outsourced maintenance spend across locations. At one acquired site in Chesapeake, Virginia, Fleetio data showed VLS was spending nearly $28,000 per month with third-party vendors. Josh is now using that information to build a business case for potentially staffing the location with in-house mechanics instead.

Operational Impact by the Numbers

From Chasing Records to Coaching Sites

Fleetio also changed the daily experience for maintenance teams. Before, shop managers spent significant time uploading invoices and tracking paperwork manually. Now, Fleetio’s Maintenance Shop Network helps capture third-party work automatically, reducing administrative burden, keeping managers focused on operations and allowing techs to move from $20/hr data entry tasks to $75/hr maintenance ones.

“it's kept our shop managers [off] of the computer and back to where they need to be, which is on the shop floor, ensuring that the work is being completed.” Josh Wykel, Senior Fleet Maintenance Advisor

PM compliance also improved significantly as VLS standardized service coding and workflows across locations. Josh estimates PM compliance improved from roughly 25% to nearly 90%, with a long-term target of 95–97%. The company is now building scorecards inside Fleetio to create more visibility and accountability at the site level. Those scorecards will track PM compliance, DOT compliance, service activity and overall maintenance performance across locations.

Building the Foundation for Long-term Fleet Strategy

Today, VLS continues expanding its use of Fleetio into procurement planning, lifecycle analysis and potentially plant maintenance operations. For Josh, the value goes beyond digitizing maintenance records. It’s having the information needed to make smarter operational and financial decisions before costs spiral out of control.

As VLS continues growing through acquisitions, Fleetio is helping the company standardize maintenance operations, improve compliance visibility and create a scalable foundation for fleet decision-making across every site.