Why vans get grounded
Most groundings start in one of these four ways, and each one leaves a different paper trail.
- A failed safety item on the driver's pre-trip inspection (the DVIC): tires, brakes, lights, mirrors, doors, fluid leaks. The driver's photo and note are the first record.
- Paperwork: an expired registration or lapsed insurance makes a van unfit to drive whatever its condition.
- Damage: a collision, a curb strike, a broken door. These often come with an incident report as well.
- An inspection by someone else. Amazon has described an automated inspection archway that scans vans and sends findings to fleet managers with photos and repair suggestions.
Whatever the cause, write the reason in plain words. Dispatch needs to know what is wrong today, and the fleet invoice check needs it at the end of the month.
Step 1: take it out of service and move the route
Mark the van out of service where dispatch will see it before they assign vans: the wave board, the day plan, or at the very least the van list everyone checks. Record the date and time and the reason. Then move the route to a spare van or an open van from a later wave.
The time matters. A van grounded at 6:40 AM and one grounded at 3 PM are not the same day of downtime, and month-end arithmetic depends on it.
Step 2: open a repair order with photos
Open a repair order the same morning, even before you have a shop. Put in the van, what is wrong, the driver's photos and the inspection it came from. Give it a number you can quote to the shop and on any dispute later.
If the same problem comes back while the repair order is still open, add a note to it instead of opening a second one. Two repair orders for one leak make the history hard to read.
Step 3: check whether AMP covers it
AMP is Amazon's maintenance program for the vans in it, and some repairs fall under it. Before anyone approves work, decide who pays: covered by AMP, or paid by the DSP. If nobody knows, mark it as needing review and find out before the shop starts.
Write the answer on the repair order. At month end, a covered repair that still shows up on the fleet invoice is money to ask back, and you can only spot it if coverage was recorded.
Step 4: compare the estimate's labor rate with the vendor's approved rate
Keep each shop's approved labor rate on file. When an estimate arrives, compare its labor rate with that number before you approve it. A higher rate isn't automatically wrong, but someone should approve it knowingly and say why.
Then check the hours. A short job estimated at a long time is the other way an estimate grows.
Step 5: follow up on approval on a timer
Once the estimate goes for approval, set a timer. Thirty minutes is a sensible default: long enough for a reply, short enough that a stalled approval doesn't eat the afternoon. When the timer runs out, call or message, write down who you reached and what they said, and set the next one.
The log of follow-ups matters later. If a van sat for three days waiting on an approval, the notes show whose side the delay was on.
Step 6: log the down dates for the fleet invoice
Every status change goes in the log with a date and time: grounded, dropped at the shop, back in service. At month end, count the days the van was down most of the day. That count is what you compare with the lease or rental line on the fleet invoice, as described in How to audit an Amazon DSP fleet invoice.
Back in service
When the shop finishes, record the final cost next to the estimate, confirm the van is fixed (a quick walk-around or the next pre-trip), then mark it back in service with the date and time. If a second repair order is still open on the same van, settle that one first or write down why the van is safe to run anyway.
Finally, close the line in your grounded van log. A van that was down a week and never got a back-in-service entry looks like it is still down in every count you run afterwards.
Print the grounded van log
One row per grounding. Keep it at dispatch, or download the CSV for your spreadsheet.
| Van | Grounded (date, time) | Reason | RO number | AMP covers it (yes, no, checking) | Sent for approval (time) | Approved (time) | Back in service (date, time) | Days down |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
How SXT Ops handles this
On the Station plan ($399 per station per month), a failed safety item on the driver app's pre-trip takes the van out of service and opens a repair order for fleet with the driver's note and photo. A grounded van can't be assigned on the wave board. The repair order runs from estimate to back in service, the estimate's labor rate is checked against the vendor's approved rate, a repair can't be approved until your team records whether AMP covers it, and sending an estimate for approval starts a 30-minute follow-up timer. SXT Ops doesn't contact the shop itself. The fleet overview shows how long each down van has been down and why.
On the Station + Back office plan, the down days feed the fleet invoice checks. More on fleet and repair orders, or bring one station to the pilot.