“On any given day, they’re inundated with invoices from vendors,” McGee said, explaining they have to read them, key in the info, check what work was done and parts were used, categorize them, and check if the fleet was overcharged by comparing the billed hours to the SRT. He said “millions of hours are being wasted” across the industry by doing these tasks manually.

Samsara’s AI invoice scanner can do this instantly, which has freed up more than 100,000 hours so far, McGee said.

Trimble’s TMT platform has integrated Corcentric to do similar tasks, populating invoices and repair orders, assigning VMRS codes to help managers analyze data.

Brian Mulshine, the former senior director of TMT product management for Trimble, explained this granular view can “get it down to what it costs you per mile to operate that truck by system group, [such as] tires, air conditioning, brakes. And now you could look at where you’ve got to focus training and cost improvements and what’s driving those.”

Mulshine left Trimble to found a company called CenterPoint Data Solutions, which is expected to launch in 2027 and will further his work digitizing fleet and OEM data to improve TCO.

But will AI evolve to a point where it takes that fleet manager’s job as well?

Fullbay SVP Shiva Bhardwaj, who founded Pitstop and worked at his family’s repair shop in Canada, knows both sides of the equation and understands the concern about AI replacing people.

He arguably has contributed to it, creating an AI receptionist called Claudia for his family’s shop. They were missing calls and revenue until Claudia was “hired.” The AI receptionist answered 20 more calls a week that would have been lost, with four of those calls leading to business estimated at $1,200 extra per week. It’s now an add-on to Fullbay Next.

Rite Wrench, a Fullbay customer based out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, reported that by using Claudia, the shop gains 1 to two new customers per week, which increases weekly volume by up to 10%. The shop reviews each call transcript prior to contacting customers to get all the basic details, so they can save time and get right to the repair quote, according to Fullbay.

“I’ve played with a lot of AI tools like this, and I’m honestly blown away by how far the technology has come in such a short amount of time,” Fullbay’s Broberg said.

Pitstop’s predictive maintenance, though, was the key technology in the deal. It boasts a 94% accuracy rate and has fascinating potential when combined with data from 5,000+ locations that use Fullbay.

Bhardwaj noted that predictive maintenance exists “to get to the root cause faster,” dropping “breadcrumbs” of data from previous repairs to help shops fix issues right the first time.

“We want to be able to, with a click of a button, route that whole diagnostic data, the root cause, all the analysis, from Pitstop into that service request to that shop,” he explained of the longer goal.

But it’s still up to the tech to complete the diagnosis and repair.

“There’s no robot or AI going to come in that’s going to replace that,” Bhardwaj asserted.

What AI can do is help fleets and shops remain competitive during future economic downturns by detecting and avoiding catastrophic failures and profit leaks, Bhardwaj said.

“These things can make the difference for some businesses, and that’s really what keeps the lights on,” he concluded.