The Mileage field records an integer in miles. That number, taken at every check-in for every vehicle over six months, produces a utilisation distribution across the fleet that a transport coordinator has never seen in a paper-based operation.
What Fleet Managers Are Flying Blind On
A fleet of eight vans operating under a paper walkaround system has one reliable output: signed sheets confirming a driver did something before departure. What the sheets do not produce is trend data. No one can tell you which vehicle is running 200 miles a week over its maintenance interval because no one has aggregated the weekly mileage entries. No one can tell you the first aid kit went missing from van 4 somewhere between the October check and the November audit, because the monthly papers are in a binder and the October entry for van 4 has water damage.
The Registration field in this template is a choice list, meaning it can be filtered. Every check-in for a specific vehicle plates on its own entry, timestamped, user-attributed, with all inspection fields attached. When van 4's first aid kit shows Satisfactory in October and Defect in November, that transition is a dated, auditable event. The driver who did the October check is on record. The driver who found the Defect in November is on record. The transport coordinator who was notified and did nothing is implied by the absence of a remedial action log — which is the next conversation.
The Tyre Data Loop That Actually Catches Problems
Fleet tyre management run without measurement records is guesswork. A driver doing a visual kick-and-glance walkaround will not catch a tyre that has dropped from 78 PSI to 64 PSI over three weeks, because visual inspection does not detect pressure loss at that rate. The four-corner pressure fields — Nearside Front, Nearside Rear, Offside Front, Offside Rear — all in PSI — require an actual gauge reading. That reading either confirms the tyre is within the manufacturer's specified range or it does not. There is no subjective interpretation.
The tread depth fields recorded as integers work the same way. The legal minimum in the UK is 1.6mm across the central three-quarters of the tread width and around the entire circumference. A tyre measuring 3mm at the nearside front and 1.8mm at the offside rear is not a fleet-level observation — it is a specific maintenance instruction for a specific vehicle before it runs the next job.
Over a six-month data set, tread wear rate per corner reveals alignment issues and load distribution problems that a visual walkaround misses entirely.
The Four-View Bodywork Record Before Every Shift
The bodywork photo set — Drivers Side, Front Including Roof, Passenger Side, Rear Doors — is timestamped at the point of check-in. For logistics operations where vehicles are touching loading docks, reversing into congested drop zones, and being handed between drivers across shifts, the pre-shift photo record is the only objective baseline for damage attribution.
A scrape that appears on the offside rear door during a mid-afternoon delivery slot: the pre-shift photo from that morning shows the door clean. The post-delivery report from the afternoon driver does not mention the damage. The following morning's walkaround catches it. The date-stamped image from the previous morning's check establishes the damage window precisely.
The Additional Defects image field handles whatever the structured checklist misses — a cracked interior trim panel, a broken cargo hook, a bent aerial — photographed in context at the point of discovery, attached to the entry for that vehicle on that date.