How a Monday Morning Safety Check Can Make Your Landscaping Team More Efficient
Our team minimizes downtime and maximizes efficiency by staying on top of the maintenance needs for our trucks and equipment. We do not have a full-time mechanic on staff, but we do have a Fleet Manager who manages simple maintenance and repairs and then schedules our mobile mechanics as needed.
There are a few things we've learned along the way that have made us even more efficient, and they would be great programs to start this winter as you prepare for a busy spring or manage the upcoming snow season.
1. We use mobile mechanics. We have great mobile mechanics that we rely on to make repairs to our trucks. They'll come to our office and make repairs overnight for us, and they'll also go out to wherever a truck is if there's an issue while a crew is in the field. The service call cost to have them do that is often cheaper than towing the truck back to our office or a mechanic.
2. We put in place a Monday Morning Safety Check. Every Monday, our Team Leaders have a checklist they go through to look over their truck (and trailer, if they have one). They mark anything that's not quite right on their checklist, and those get sent to Bill, our Fleet Manager. The checklist is in Aspire and here's a screenshot of what it looks like for my truck so you can see what you might want to capture, no matter software you are using:
Each of those items has a dropdown list when you click on it.
Bill can then create a punch list of minor maintenance or repairs he can get done, and since our Team Leaders have training every Tuesday, he has an extra hour on those mornings to get work done before the crews roll out for the day. It helps us catch and fix minor issues before they become bigger.
I won't lie to you - like every other landscaping company, we have issues with trucks breaking down, mowers getting flat tires, or small engines refusing to start, too. But I believe strongly that if you take good care of your machines, they usually take care of you too. Being proactive helps us to do that without impacting our productivity during the week.
We have just one Grunder Landscaping Field Trip left for the year on December 6-7, where you'll meet Bill, our Fleet Manager, and hear exactly how he keeps our crews up and running year-round. Will I see you there?
Marty Grunder
Founder & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.