Fleet Vehicle Inspection DVIR Insights

How many times have you wished you could streamline the way in which you manage your fleet? With everything that goes into it, we know that the task brings more than its share of headaches and obligations. Take, for instance, the driver vehicle inspection reports (DVIR) your company needs to file before and after every single trip.

It’s a daily grind familiar to every fleet manager: get up early, fight traffic, get to the office, and begin fighting with your drivers about driver-vehicle inspection reports (DVIR). You hound them to do the inspections, to fully and accurately fill out the form, to tell you about any mechanical issues with your fleet, and to do more than just a cursory checkbox-based inspection.

“Let’s make this task as long, and drawn out as humanly possible,” said no one ever.

If you’re like most people, you’re always looking for ways to make your job a little easier. For those in the commercial driving industry, one thing that could help relieve some stress is to streamline daily vehicle inspections with eDVIR.

It’s a scenario that every fleet manager faces sooner or later: the case of the missing DVIR report. Whether it’s because you need to check on a vehicle's maintenance history, or because of something more stressful, like a lawsuit or a DOT audit, it’s easy to tear your office, your mind, and maybe your team apart when you can’t find these legally mandated reports.

Driver vehicle inspection reports (DVIR) are already an integral part of managing your fleet. So, when it comes to how best to coordinate this critical task, the question isn’t so much whether DVIR is worth the effort — it absolutely is — but how best to go about satisfying this requirement and maintaining the protection it affords you and your business.

No matter how long you’ve been managing your fleet, chances are good that you’ve become intimately familiar with — and perhaps even disillusioned by — the requirement that is the daily vehicle inspection report (DVIR).

Fleet managers have a wide and seemingly endless array of responsibilities -- assigning drivers to cars, managing supply chain issues, promoting, hiring, firing and so much more. Staying on top of pre-trip vehicle inspections can feel like little more than another headache, and a meaningless hassle.

For fleet managers like yourself, daily inspection reports are just another part of the reality of running your business. However, they don't have to be nearly the headache that they once were proven to be. In recent years, new tools have arisen to provide you with the option of setting aside your paper-based process in favor of something a bit more in keeping with today’s technologically driven landscape.

From time to time, the rigors of fleet management can become too much. With all the work that goes into maintaining each vehicle and supervising each driver, you may have caught yourself subconsciously searching for some way to streamline the processes involved in your day-to-day operation.

Let’s break down the differences between a paper-based DVIR process and an eDVIR (electronic DVIR) process and show you the advantages that technology has to offer.

It's that pesky form you have to fill out before you go on a haul. For some truck drivers it's the bane of their existence. In fact, some drivers will avoid it at all costs. It’s that frustrating, time-consuming task known as the Driver Vehicle Inspection Report (DVIR).

A driver-vehicle inspection report -- known better as a pre-trip inspection -- is designed to ensure a vehicle is in good working order and safe to take out on the road. Federal law requires a daily inspection, as well as a report to document the inspection, but does not require drivers to use any specific form. So what exactly are you looking for during a pre-trip inspection? These vital safety inspections have several key components.