Can Public Fleets Trust the Data Driving Their Decisions?

Public fleets aren't short on data; the question is whether they can trust all the information coming in. 

That question shaped a panel discussion at the 2026 Government Fleet Expo & Conference moderated by Dan Simpson, Fleetio’s product marketing manager. Panelists included Jesus Martinez-Ramirez of SCV Water, Dustin Palmer of the City of The Colony, Texas, retired New York fleet leader Eric Richardson, and Chase Covey, key account manager for Valvoline. 

For Martinez-Ramirez, that meant dealing with records that had been entered inconsistently enough to skew SCV Water’s reporting. Before the agency could rely on the insights coming out of its system, the fleet team had to clean up the data and look more closely at how information would be entered going forward.

Palmer brought the discussion into the shop, where stored oil-analysis reports help technicians work from the same record. Richardson pushed the conversation toward cost, arguing that fleets cannot show the full cost of maintenance if the labor rate in the system does not reflect what the work actually costs.

When Fleet Data Starts With a Cleanup

SCV Water’s data problem was not a lack of information, but how that information was entered.

Martinez-Ramirez said the agency found inconsistencies in its records that changed the way its reports looked. The problem depended partly on who entered the information, which meant the insights coming out of the system did not always give the fleet team a reliable picture.

“We found that there were still a lot of inconsistencies with our data,” Martinez-Ramirez said. “It just kind of depended on who was entering it.”

Richardson said New York saw a similar problem when fleet information still depended on paper records. Before the city had a fuel card system, he said, some of the biggest data errors came from information being written down or entered manually.

“Get off paper as much as possible,” Richardson said. “That was where the data was just so bad.”

Putting Fleet Information Where the Work Happens

Once a fleet cleans up its data, the next question is whether that information reaches the people who can use it.

At SCV Water, Martinez-Ramirez said telematics data is no longer limited to a separate system with restricted access. The agency integrated its telematics data into Fleetio, allowing vehicle information to flow automatically into the fleet management system.

That changed how technicians work with the information. Martinez-Ramirez said technicians now monitor alerts and check for active fault codes when a vehicle comes in for service. They can also see open recalls before deciding how to prioritize the repair.

Palmer described a similar shift in The Colony, Texas, where oil-analysis reports are stored in the fleet management system instead of being kept separately. When a vehicle comes in for an oil change, technicians can pull up the report and look for signs of a deeper issue developing.

“We take our oil analysis sheets, and we actually upload them into our document section in Fleetio so that they’re able to pull them up,” Palmer said. “It’s been good to be able to track all that and keep the information there so that everyone’s informed in one spot.”

Chase Covey, key account manager for Valvoline, said some fleets lose time after adopting new software because they do not fully understand what the system can do. He pointed to one customer that was still struggling with manual data entry after implementing fleet management software. Once the customer learned how to use more of the system’s capabilities, Covey said, it saved 18 to 20 labor hours per week.

Palmer said centralized access has also helped outside the shop. When a dealer or vendor said an asset was being worked on, telematics allowed the fleet to check whether that unit had actually moved.

“It’s really neat when you can pull up something that a dealer or a vendor has had for a while, and they say, we’re actively working on it,” Palmer said. “And you look at it, and it says it hasn’t moved in 12 days.”

Palmer said sharing that information with supervisors has reduced calls and made it easier for staff to find a unit without waiting on someone else to track it down.

Using Data to Decide What Comes Next

For Palmer, the value of maintenance data isn't just keeping a record of what happened. It is in using that record to decide whether a vehicle should stay on its current service schedule or come in sooner.

He said The Colony performs oil analysis during every PM service, then uses those results to adjust the next interval based on what is happening inside that specific unit. If the oil is showing signs of degradation or fuel dilution, Palmer said the fleet can shorten the service interval before the issue becomes more serious.

“We’ll set the new schedule for the vehicle based on its individual sheet versus a blanket,” Palmer said. 

That approach has changed how the fleet thinks about maintenance timing. Palmer said mileage alone does not always show how hard an asset has been working, especially when equipment spends long periods idling. He said fuel use and hour-meter data can give the fleet a better picture of what the engine has actually been through between services.

Martinez-Ramirez said real-time alerts have also changed repair decisions at SCV Water. Before telematics data was integrated into the fleet system, operators could keep a vehicle even when it needed attention. Now that technicians can see alerts as they come in, the fleet can prioritize repairs sooner and reduce the chance of ignoring a problem until it becomes more expensive.

Richardson said replacement decisions have become harder because the time it takes to receive a new vehicle has changed the calculation. For New York, he said some fire apparatus that once took roughly a year and a half to replace can now take closer to three years, which forces fleets to think earlier about how long they can keep maintaining a unit before ordering its replacement.

The Data Fleets Still Do Not Have 

Even when fleets centralize more information, Richardson said one of the hardest numbers to capture is the true cost of labor.

He said fleets need fully burdened labor rates if they want maintenance costs to reflect what the work actually costs the agency. For New York, that meant looking beyond a mechanic’s base pay and finding a better way to connect the full cost of shop work back to each vehicle.

“Making sure that the true cost of vehicle maintenance is part of what you’re doing,” Richardson said. “Our vehicle cost isn’t just X. It’s all these other things that we need to make sure that we’re talking about.”

Martinez-Ramirez identified EV performance as another area where SCV Water needs more information. The agency has begun adding EVs, but its own fleet has not generated enough information to support broader conclusions about how those vehicles perform.

“We don’t have enough EVs to really make data-driven decisions,” Martinez-Ramirez said.

To expand the available dataset, SCV Water joined an EV consortium through which more than 30 organizations contribute telematics information. Martinez-Ramirez said the shared data will allow the agency to compare its vehicles with similar EVs used in similar operations rather than relying only on its limited experience.

The agency is also testing advanced reporting and artificial intelligence tools that allow staff to ask questions of fleet data. Martinez-Ramirez said the process still requires the team to review the answers and determine where the information is accurate. “I think we’ll start to get some of the insights with time,” he said.

Bringing More Assets Into the System 

Martinez-Ramirez said SCV Water is also looking beyond vehicles as it improves the data available to its fleet team.

One gap involved emergency generators. During the fires, Martinez-Ramirez said, the agency lost a propane generator while its fuel vendor declined to refuel equipment because of concerns about staff safety. At the same time, SCV Water had multiple generators running, and technicians had to check them after already working long shifts. 

Better generator data, Martinez-Ramirez said, would have helped the fleet understand which units needed attention first.

“Having that data of just the generators, how they’re running, fuel levels, and other data would have been useful,” Martinez-Ramirez said.

The work is not as simple as adding another vehicle to the system. Martinez-Ramirez said some generators are older, and fuel-level tracking can be more complicated than on newer equipment.

Richardson said the point applies broadly to equipment that sits outside the normal vehicle count. Expanding the system will not eliminate every information gap, but it can give fleets a clearer view of assets that become critical during an emergency. 

“Treat your equipment as if they’re your vehicles,” Richardson said. “Make sure you tag them. Make sure you’re tracking them, make sure you’re maintaining them.”