Know what every machine is earning before month-end tells you
We build the software that pulls a dealership's machines, service bays, parts shelves, and rental contracts into one current picture. The gap is timing: utilization, service backlog, and warranty exposure are knowable, but get known at month-end instead of on Tuesday.
The starting point is telematics and the dealer management system. Machine data sits in a different portal for every brand while the DMS holds contracts, work orders, and parts. We pull telematics through manufacturer APIs — and ISO 15143-3 where supported — then join it to the DMS record.
A first project is usually either the fleet view or the rental return. The fleet view pulls each brand's telematics into one table joined to the DMS, so a machine shows its contract, hour meter, and next PM in one row. The return flow puts a phone in the yard hand's pocket: photos, hours, fuel, and damage captured at check-in and attached to the contract before the customer is billed. Both are contained, neither touches the system of record, and most of the engineering is reading reliably from systems that were not built to be read.
Reviewed
Sound familiar?
If you've said any of these, we should talk.
“Every manufacturer has its own telematics portal, and nobody checks four of them.”
We build one fleet view. Where brands expose the ISO 15143-3 API we consume it directly; otherwise we use what the OEM offers, then normalize hours, location, and fault codes into a single model joined to the DMS record.
“Warranty claims get rejected and we eat the labor.”
Rejections are usually documentation, not eligibility. We build claim assembly into the work order — required fields validated before the technician can close it, photos and fault codes attached — and track rejection reasons by manufacturer.
“We do not know real utilization until the month closes.”
We compute it continuously. DMS contract data plus telematics hours give time utilization and actual working hours side by side, with financial utilization against fleet value updating daily.
“Service scheduling is a whiteboard, and PMs get missed.”
Hour meters from telematics drive PM due dates automatically, and scheduling accounts for bay capacity, technician skill by equipment family, and parts availability. Machines coming due surface before the interval passes.
“Machines come back damaged and we cannot prove it was not like that when it left.”
Condition is a capture problem at two moments. We build check-out and check-in into a phone workflow: timestamped photos, hour and fuel readings, and a damage walk-around attached to the contract at both ends. When a dispute comes, the evidence is already on the record, and damage billing goes out with the return invoice.
How this industry actually runs
The operation as we usually find it.
A dealership runs three businesses that share a yard. Rental cares about utilization — time on rent and financial utilization against fleet value — plus contract terms, delivery and pickup, and what condition a machine comes back in. Service runs on bays, technicians, and PM intervals driven by hour meters, with warranty claims filed into each manufacturer's portal under its own rules. Parts sits underneath both, managing inventory across the counter, the shelves, and the service trucks, with OEM catalogs and supersessions. Holding it together is a dealer management system — CDK, e-Emphasys, Karmak, ASPEN — authoritative for the transaction and rarely convenient for the question.
Assets, orders, and people on one picture
Components:
- Assets & fleet (telematics, meters)
- Orders & tickets (ERP, portals, email)
- Integration hub (documented interfaces)
- Ops dashboard (exceptions first)
- Field app (dispatch, proof of work)
Connections:
- Assets & fleet to Integration hub (telemetry)
- Orders & tickets to Integration hub
- Integration hub to Ops dashboard
- Integration hub to Field app
What we build
Starting projects that fit Equipment Dealers & Rental.
- Unified telematics across mixed-brand fleets, normalized into one hours and fault model
- Rental utilization reporting, time and financial, computed daily instead of at month-end
- PM scheduling driven by telematics hour meters, with bay and parts availability
- Warranty claim workflows with field validation, evidence capture, and rejection tracking
- Parts visibility across counter, shelves, and service trucks
- DMS integrations that make the system of record queryable without disturbing it
- Customer portals showing machines on rent, hours, and service history
- Rental check-out and check-in capture with photos, hours, fuel, and damage tied to the contract
Capabilities we bring
What we'd build first
Three places a first project usually starts.
01
Unified telematics across mixed-brand fleets, normalized into one hours and fault model
02
Rental utilization reporting, time and financial, computed daily instead of at month-end
03
PM scheduling driven by telematics hour meters, with bay and parts availability
Scoped in writing before any work starts — how engagements work.
Working in Equipment Dealers & Rental?
Tell us the line.
What runs by hand, what is not connected, what you are trying to build. An engineer replies within one business day with whether and how we would approach it.
Common questions
What Equipment Dealers & Rental teams ask first.
Our DMS is old and the vendor is unhelpful. Is that a dead end?
Rarely. Older dealer systems usually offer a database, a reporting view, or a scheduled file export, and any of those is enough to build a read layer on.
Do we need telematics on every machine for this to be worth doing?
No. Start with the fleet that already reports, which is most machines built in the last decade. Older units can be covered with aftermarket devices or hour readings captured at service.
What is the smallest useful project here?
Usually a single fleet dashboard merging the OEM portals and joining to rental status. It is a contained integration, and it establishes the data foundation utilization reporting sits on.
Will the manufacturers let us pull telematics data at all?
Usually, with conditions. Most major OEMs offer an API or a data-sharing program for dealers, and several support the ISO 15143-3 (AEMP 2.0) standard for mixed-fleet access. Terms vary: some require enrollment, some limit refresh rates, some only expose a subset of what their portal shows. Aftermarket devices fill the gaps for older or unsupported machines. We typically confirm what each of your brands exposes before scoping, so nobody is surprised by a portal that turns out to be export-only.
Where does AI fit for an equipment dealer?
Mostly in reading things. Warranty claim narratives drafted from the work order and fault codes, parts requests matched to OEM catalogs and supersessions, service quotes assembled from history on the same model. Fault-code patterns across the fleet can also flag machines likely to fail before the customer calls, though that usually needs a meaningful history of data before it is trustworthy. We keep anything that files a claim or orders a part behind a person's approval.
More in Operations & Field
Strategy. Software. Systems.
Engineering for Equipment Dealers & Rental.
Describe the problem in your own words. An engineer reads it — not a sales script — and tells you plainly what it would take.