Police Lane

Reality Check for New Fleet Managers

Written by Ed Sanow

If you are new to police fleet management, you are in for something of a shock. The normal, routine maintenance needs for police vehicles is nothing whatsoever like other government administration vehicles, or the retail vehicle you drive to the department.

If your experience is limited to the retail commute or family use of sedans, SUVs and pickups, the maintenance demands are so different that you may even think the police vehicles are being abused. But this is not the case—they are just being driven a lot, and under the harshest conditions.

Police vehicles idle quite a bit, and for a variety of good reasons. The two most important reasons are: 1) to keep officers warm or cool, and to keep the computer equipment cool, and 2) to provide current to emergency lights from the alternator, instead of running the battery down.

Battery use and dead batteries are going to be your first shock. A retail vehicle can go almost its entire life on the Original Equipment battery without it ever running down. On a police vehicle, so much emergency and communications equipment is added that the current draw often exceeds the alternator’s ability to keep up. This drains the battery, often to the point where not enough juice is left to start the vehicle.

Another possible situation is that the police gear was (poorly) upfitted without battery saving devices, allowing the battery to be drained dead overnight by tiny current draws. Today’s batteries cannot be run totally dead and then fully charged like the batteries of old. Some batteries run dead, and stay that way, in as little as 12 deep cycles. So, due to either direct battery drain or parasitic power drain, expect to buy many batteries.

Tire wear will be a shock as well. A retail sedan may often go more than 40,000 miles on a set of properly inflated and rotated tires. In normal police use, expect that mileage to be between 12,000 and 18,000 miles. That mileage bracket is perfectly normal—nothing wrong with the driver, nothing wrong with the car, no vehicle abuse. Police tires are a compromise and are designed to give better wet and dry traction at the expense of tire life.

Only tire life of less than 10,000 miles should raise your concern, and only tire life of less than 6,000 miles is real cause for investigation. Don’t try to fix a problem that does not exist by putting 80,000-mile-warranty tires on police vehicles. You will get slippery-when-wet tires, and all warranties exclude police use anyhow.

The same goes for brake pads and brake rotors. The average retail sedan may often go 40,000 to 60,000 miles on the front brakes, and 60,000 to 80,000 miles on the rear brakes and all rotors. This is not so with police cars for two reasons.

First, police brakes are used more frequently, and with more pedal pressure, than retail brakes. Second, just like tires, brakes are a compromise. The more aggressive friction compounds in the police brake pads are designed to give better hot performance at the expense of brake life. In fact, you may need to replace front brake pads and front rotors every time you replace tires. Installing new brake pads every 8,000 to 10,000 miles is common.

Frequent oil changes will also be news to you. It will seem like your police cars get the oil changed every month! Actually, that very well might be. Most police vehicles are designed to run from 5,000 to 7,500 miles between oil changes. Simply divide the miles driven per month by the miles between oil changes, and you will be able to manage your expectations. Some hot-seated sedans (those driven three shifts, 24/7) may need the oil changed every two weeks.

Also realize that every idle hour adds 29 to 33 miles of wear on the engine. So, 5,000 miles on the odometer may easily be more than 10,000 miles of engine wear. Police engines really, really need frequent (and disciplined) oil changes.

When it comes to fuel use, forget EPA estimates! Your admin cars will probably get 70 percent of the EPA City estimates, and your patrol cars will probably get less than half of the EPA City estimates. Your V6 patrol cars will probably get the same mileage as your V8 patrol cars. No kidding now—if your urban patrol cars get better than 8 mpg, you are doing fine.

The best advice for new fleet managers? Rigidly enforce the preventative maintenance program. Do an audit. PM compliance rates, referring to when the service is done in relation to when it is supposed to be done, will probably be less than 30 percent. PM is the foundation of fleet maintenance. It can lower operating costs by $0.05 per mile. Increasing PM compliance rates from 30 percent to 95 percent will lower total maintenance costs by almost 40 percent.