NYC Fleet Services Stay Strong Through Pandemic

Like many other city fleets, the New York City fleet has been greatly and directly impacted by COVID-19 with five dedicated staff losing their lives, many more falling ill, administrative staff transitioning to remote work where possible, and total garage staffing capacity declining to 61% at the height of the emergency in NYC in early April, according to the NYC Fleet Newsletter.

Through this period, fleet servicing remained responsive and reliable, even improving services in many areas. The total fleet out of service improved to 8.6% based on the daily readiness report, which is distributed and published online each day. This reverses an increase in FY19 and maintains their pace of improvement from 10.4% in the first fiscal year of the administration.  

In FY20, they remarkably recorded the largest preventive maintenance inspection program since they implemented a new fleet management system in FY13. Fleet agencies completed 77,430 preventive maintenance inspections and an additional 31,117 motor vehicle mandated inspections.  

In total, agencies addressed over 261,000 service orders and recorded their highest level of in-house labor charges through the current fleet management system, with over 2.5 million labor hours charged in by mechanical repair staff. In total, over $266 million was spent on fleet service staffing in FY20. Fleet was able to maintain this level of services while also continuing a multi-year decline in charged overtime costs.