Freedom Boat Club

Freedom Boat Club is a private membership club of boats – not the normal picture we get when we think of a fleet of vehicles, but it still faces all the same day-to-day challenges as any construction or trucking company, with the added complication of a large body of water. As co-owner Kevin Seelig explains: "We offer our members unlimited access to a fleet of boats at a lower price tag with less hassle than owning a single boat." And all of those boats need to be in pristine condition for their membership at all times. “Our members expect a clean, dry, new boat,” Kevin says. “It goes without saying that the maintenance has to be top notch. Members of Freedom Boat Club expect the highest levels of customer service and quality, and it's very important for us to provide that.”

Life Before Fleetio

Manual Processes

"Our maintenance process and scheduling was very rudimentary. We had dock staff walk around and collect hours on a sheet of paper, transpose it to Excel worksheet that were kind of color codes [to] red, yellow or green out where the boats were in their service schedule. Time consuming. There was no automation associated with it." – Kevin Seelig, Co-Owner

Communication Challenges

"Before we had Fleetio, our maintenance process was extremely manual. We were kind of combing through boat records, paper files, and things like that. I remember having a binder just full of meter history so we could track all of our preventative maintenance and our services… Very unorganized, to be completely honest with you. So if something urgent came up, that was obviously getting our attention, and a lot of the small things would fall through the cracks." – Mackenzie Conley, Assistant Director of Operations

Reactive Prioritization

"Before Fleetio existed, we would show up to a location and literally we would have four issues that were more important… We would get there to start one job and not realize it, but there [were] four other jobs that were much more important to handle." – Eddie Skipper, Director of Fleet Operations

Life With Fleetio

Smoother Operations

"Fleetio is one of the first things I pull up in the morning – see if there's anything that I need to take care of. All the other important issues just go into the workflow and we'll get it to the shop team immediately." – Mackenzie Conley

Cross-team Collaboration

"We've used Fleetio as the catchall, so we'd be able to close the gap between the shop team and the dock staff – and this is all done remotely. We're not texting or calling the shop team anymore to say that there's a down boat. The shop team gets it in real time as soon as we send the photos and all the maintenance history with it." – Mackenzie Conley

Proactive Fleet Management

"It allows us to order parts. It allows us to track inventory… When my maintenance technicians show up on site, there's a game plan. They know exactly what they're heading to the location to deal with versus asking operations team, ‘What am I here to do today?’" – Kevin Seelig

Impact & Results

Excellent Maintenance

"I feel confident in saying that we are hitting all of our maintenance compliance, probably 90 to 95 percent of the time at this point with Fleetio." – Mackenzie Conley

Improved Member Experience

"When a member comes to Freedom Boat Club, one of the biggest reasons is that they expect a very well maintained boat, because at the end of the day, that's why they joined. They don't want to have to take care of it." – Mackenzie Conley

Better Resale Value

"It's improved our boat sales division because boats are being refurbished quicker, boats are having less damage when they come out of [the] fleet. Honestly, there's so many benefits, it's hard to enumerate each of them." – Kevin Seelig

Fleetio is single handedly one of the biggest benefits in the last couple years that we've implemented. One of the best systems and process improvements we've implemented in many years. Kevin Seelig, Co-Owner, Freedom Boat Club