A driver arrives at the depot at 5 AM. He needs to complete the daily truck inspection before heading out. He grabs a printed checklist, marks "brakes OK," "lights OK," "tires OK" in 30 seconds without actually looking at anything, signs it, and hops in the truck. The checklist sits in a pile on someone's desk. Nobody reads it. If there's a mechanical issue, it gets discovered on the road.
This was the reality for a logistics company with 50 trucks that reached out to us for help. It wasn't an extreme case — this is what happens in most fleets that manage maintenance with paper and spreadsheets.
What we built for them became FleetCheck, a platform that any company with vehicles or assets can now use.
The diagnosis: three problems feeding each other
When we ran the initial assessment, we found three problems that seemed separate but were deeply connected:
Inspections generated no data
Drivers were completing paper checklists every day, but that information went nowhere. There was no way to know if a truck had a pattern of failures, if a driver always reported the same issues, or if a vehicle type was more problematic than others.
Paper is an information black hole. Data goes in and never comes out.
Maintenance was 100% reactive
Without inspection data, the only trigger for maintenance was something breaking down. There was no preventive maintenance, no service frequency tracking, no alerts for progressive wear. Every repair was an emergency, with the truck out of service and deliveries delayed.
The cost of reactive maintenance is 3 to 5 times higher than preventive. Not just for the repair itself, but for downtime, late delivery penalties, and emergency freight to cover the unit.
Documents expired without anyone noticing
Insurance, vehicle inspections, operating permits, driver's licenses. Each truck and driver has between 5 and 10 documents with expiration dates. Multiply that by 50 trucks and 60 drivers and you have over 500 dates someone needs to track.
They managed it with an Excel spreadsheet. And as happens with every spreadsheet that depends on manual updates, there were always expired documents discovered during a road inspection or worse, after an accident.
A truck operating with an expired inspection certificate or without valid insurance is a legal liability. In case of an accident, the company loses all coverage and assumes full responsibility.
The solution: FleetCheck
Instead of patching each problem separately, we designed a platform that addresses them at the root. FleetCheck has four integrated modules:
1. Digital inspections
We replaced paper checklists with digital checklists on mobile. The driver opens the app, scans the truck's QR code, and completes a guided point-by-point inspection.
Each inspection point has three options: OK, observation, or failure. If they mark a failure, the system requires a mandatory photo and description. They can't skip points or mark everything "OK" in 30 seconds without looking.
The game changer: every inspection is recorded with date, time, driver, vehicle, GPS location, and photos. That information no longer disappears into a stack of papers. It becomes data that feeds the rest of the system.
Inspection templates are configurable. The company can have one template for pre-trip, another for post-trip, another for weekly deep inspection. Each vehicle type can have its own template with specific checkpoints.
2. Work orders
When an inspection detects a failure, the system automatically generates a work order and assigns it to the appropriate workshop or vendor.
The complete flow:
- Driver reports a failure during inspection
- A work order is created with vehicle data, problem description, and photos
- The maintenance manager reviews, prioritizes, and assigns
- The mechanic records work performed, parts used, and hours
- The order is closed and added to the vehicle's history
Each order has states visible to everyone: pending, in progress, completed. The fleet manager sees a dashboard with how many open orders there are, which are overdue, and which trucks are out of service.
3. QR per asset
Every truck, trailer, forklift, or company asset gets a unique QR code placed in a visible location. Scanning it from any phone opens the asset's complete file:
- Vehicle data (make, model, plate, year, mileage)
- Inspection history
- Open and closed work orders
- Current documents and upcoming expirations
- Next scheduled service
No need to search spreadsheets or ask "when was the last service on this truck?" Scan the QR and the answer is right there.
4. Expiration alerts
All documents with expiration dates are loaded into the system: insurance, inspections, permits, licenses. FleetCheck sends automatic alerts at 30 days, 15 days, and 7 days before expiration.
Alerts arrive by email and as dashboard notifications. The fleet manager sees a panel with all upcoming expirations organized by urgency. No need to remember to check the spreadsheet — the system tells them.
Results after 6 months
The numbers speak for themselves:
Properly completed inspections: from ~30% (estimate with paper, where most were filled mechanically) to 94% with the digital system. Drivers complete the real inspection because the system guides them and doesn't let them skip points.
Failure detection time: from "when it breaks on the road" to detection during the daily pre-trip inspection. 70% of mechanical failures are now caught before the truck leaves the depot.
Expired documents in circulation: from an average of 8-12 expired documents at any given time to zero. Alerts eliminated the problem completely.
Unclosed work orders: maintenance backlog reduced by 60% in the first 3 months, simply because there was now visibility into what was pending.
The hardest ROI to quantify but most important: legal risk reduction. A single accident with expired documentation can cost more than years of fleet management platform subscription.
How we built it (for the technical crowd)
FleetCheck runs on the same stack we use for all our apps:
- Frontend: Next.js + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS
- Backend: Supabase (PostgreSQL + Auth + Edge Functions)
- Mobile: React Native for the driver's inspection app
- QR: Dynamic generation linked to asset ID
- Alerts: Edge Functions with cron jobs evaluating expirations daily
- Storage: Supabase Storage for inspection photos
Initial implementation took 10 weeks from assessment to production. The first 2 weeks were design and functional definition with the company's team, the next 6 were development, and the last 2 were testing and adjustments with real users.
Monthly infrastructure cost for 50 trucks, 60 drivers, and thousands of inspections is under USD 50/month. Most of the Supabase cost is photo storage, and with the compression we apply, each inspection with 5 photos weighs less than 2MB.
What type of company is this for?
FleetCheck was designed for the logistics company that originated it, but the logic applies to any operation with assets that need maintenance:
- Transport and logistics: trucks, vans, trailers
- Construction: heavy machinery, high-value tools
- Mining: operational equipment, specialized vehicles
- Companies with their own fleet: any company with 10+ vehicles that needs to control inspections, maintenance, and documentation
- Vehicle rental: condition tracking between deliveries and returns
The platform is multi-tenant: each company has isolated data, its own inspection templates, and its own user roles.
Conclusion
Digitizing fleet maintenance isn't an innovation project. It's an operational necessity. Paper doesn't scale, spreadsheets don't alert, and reactive maintenance is expensive.
What matters most isn't the technology itself — it's turning inspections that used to be a bureaucratic formality into a real source of data that drives maintenance decisions. When you know what's happening with every vehicle every day, you stop fighting fires and start preventing them.
FleetCheck is a Richmond Analytics product. If your company has a fleet and maintenance still depends on paper and spreadsheets, let's talk.
