A Business That Did Not Exist Yet

In 1997, if a fleet needed a repair, the truck went to a shop. That was the extent of available options.

That same year, Bob Dickinson founded what would become Dickinson Fleet Services from a modest operation in Indianapolis. His grandsons, Kyle and Kevin Coltrain, grew up around the business. Their father, Ted Coltrain, and uncle, Mike Dickinson, managed the company as it expanded. The brothers spent weekends in the shop long before holding any formal title.

The early service offering was narrow, largely because the market had not yet defined what it wanted. As Kevin Coltrain explained on The Long Haul podcast, mobile maintenance in the early 2000s consisted primarily of oil changes, preventive maintenance, and minor repairs — and much of the work involved educating customers on what mobile maintenance even was.

Both brothers joined the family business after college. Kyle, who played wide receiver at the University of Central Florida and had expected to pursue coaching, moved into field sales in Tampa during a period when every pitch started from zero. Kevin oversaw regional operations across multiple markets.

Then they observed what happened to the company over time.

The Roll-Up They Lived Through

Dickinson Fleet Services brought in Ridgemont Equity Partners as majority shareholder. In an acquisition announced on January 5, 2021, Cox Automotive purchased the company outright, integrating it into its Pivet fleet services platform. At the time of the deal, Dickinson operated more than 700 mobile repair units and employed approximately 800 technicians. Under Cox, the business expanded to over 1,500 technicians serving more than 14,000 clients annually and was rebranded as Fleet Services by Cox Automotive. In early 2025, Cox acquired the remaining minority stake held by Mike Dickinson and Ted Coltrain.

That acquisition was part of a broader pattern. Private equity firms and large automotive services companies have consolidated independent fleet maintenance providers throughout the past decade, drawn by the recurring revenue of preventive maintenance contracts and the scale economies of national technician networks. The Coltrains experienced that cycle from the inside.

Kyle's account of that trajectory is notably measured. He describes the transition from a small family-owned business to a private equity-backed company to a subsidiary of a large corporation, and says there was good and bad in all of it. He does not characterize the buyers as villains. His argument is more specific and harder to dismiss.

When large capital enters, it brings goals, agendas, and timelines. Those timelines translate into quotas. The quota that concerned him most was the technician headcount target — because, in his view, a manager tasked with adding ten technicians in a single month will hire someone from a phone screen who merely claims to be able to turn a wrench.

That risk is particular to mobile repair work, and it compounds a challenge the entire trucking sector faces. The American Trucking Associations has reported a persistent shortage of qualified diesel technicians, estimating the gap in the tens of thousands. Hiring pressure is not unique to any one company, but the consequences of a marginal hire are more severe in a mobile setting.

A mobile technician operates alone. Kyle stated it directly: a technician in the field does not have a colleague in the adjacent bay to consult, and frequently works nights, early mornings, and weekends. A shop environment can absorb a marginal hire because a more experienced worker is nearby. A mobile operation cannot.

A second pressure compounds the problem. Push a technician to complete a four-hour job in two, Kevin said, and things get missed — not because anyone intended to do poor work, but because the clock was set incorrectly.

The brothers launched Coltrain Onsite Fleet Care in August 2025 with coverage across seven states. Kyle told the podcast the company now operates approximately 70 mobile technicians across 15 states, primarily east of the Mississippi River plus Texas.

What a Mobile Unit Can Actually Do in 2026

Most small carriers operate from an outdated understanding of mobile maintenance capabilities, and that knowledge gap costs them money.

Coltrain's units are equipped with the Miller Trailblazer 330 Air Pak, a combination welder, generator, and compressor. That single piece of equipment reshapes the service conversation. It enables welding and trailer body work to be performed in the yard — something Kyle described as nearly unheard of in a mobile environment, and which surprises most prospective clients he meets.

The company's own materials state that 95 percent of routine repairs and maintenance are handled on site. In the podcast episode, the brothers detailed what that includes: engine diagnostics via a direct plug into the truck, after-treatment work including DEF system sensors and diesel particulate filter replacement, brake jobs down to shoes, drums, and chambers, air conditioning service, lighting repairs, and bolt-on component replacements including starters, alternators, and radiators.

The remaining 5 percent is defined by two categories, and Kevin was candid about both. Internal engine work requires opening the engine, and an open engine in an outdoor environment invites contamination. Pulling a motor creates a safety hazard for a technician working without a shop's lifting infrastructure. Catastrophic body and accident damage requiring paint is referred to a body shop. These jobs leave the yard because quality and safety considerations demand it — not because the equipment cannot be transported.

Understanding that boundary before it becomes urgent is the operational point. A carrier who knows what can be addressed in the yard stops treating every fault code as a tow decision.

The Hours Are the Product

The most insightful reframing in the conversation centered on scheduling rather than repair work itself.

Kyle said that when a prospective client asks what hours his mobile units operate, he responds with a question: what hours is your fleet not running? Coltrain's technicians work early mornings, nights, and weekends by design, because that is when the asset is idle.

That is where the cost comparison most small carriers construct breaks down. Kyle's position is that mobile rates run roughly on par with a quality shop, and that the real gap appears when compared to quick-lube operations performing a five-point inspection and an oil change — where the savings are front-loaded and the real costs surface later.

The expenses that never appear on the comparison are the ones that matter most. A shop operates during business hours, meaning the truck is sidelined during revenue-generating hours. Someone drives the unit to the shop and back while on the clock, or waits in a reception area, or a second driver is dispatched to retrieve the first. None of that shows up on the invoice.

Kyle's summary bears noting: planned downtime is easier to manage and more cost-effective than unplanned downtime. When a truck breaks down, the carrier is paying a driver who is sitting on the shoulder while a load misses its scheduled delivery.

Kevin observed that most fleets never perform this calculation, though they feel its effects. The common workaround is purchasing spare units — a legitimate solution that carries its own cost of ownership. Tightening the maintenance program is the less expensive version of the same insurance.

Billing for Work That Was Never Done

The most uncomfortable portion of the conversation addressed invoices for inspections that were never actually performed.

Kevin framed this as a structural feature of mobile work rather than a character flaw. Nobody is standing over the technician's shoulder. Kyle went further, saying he does not believe anyone sets out to do a poor job, and that the failure stems from pressure: told to complete a trailer inspection in ten minutes, a technician does a quick walk-around, applies a pass sticker, and moves on.

Coltrain's solution is a proprietary field service application that date- and time-stamps each individual inspection point rather than the inspection sheet as a whole, with required photo prompts at every point. This produces two outcomes. The customer receives photographic evidence of every inspected item. And the company obtains a timing record it can audit — so an inspection point that should take a skilled technician 20 minutes but was completed in two gets flagged for a manager review and quality check.

For a carrier evaluating any provider, the key takeaway is not the specific software. It is that the technology to verify this work now exists, which means a provider unable to produce point-level documentation is making a deliberate choice.

How to Vet a Provider Before You Need One

When asked what a small carrier should look for in any mobile provider — not only his own — Kyle offered a set of questions that cost nothing to ask.

Request copies of technician certifications: brake certifications and DOT inspector certifications. Kyle said he welcomes such requests and that a provider who hesitates, or does not maintain those records on file, has revealed something important.

Then ask the local manager how many technicians he supervises. Coltrain limits its mobile service managers to 10 to 15 technicians. Kyle said he has seen ratios of 40 to 1 spread across three states and does not understand how a manager at that workload can personally inspect work, know the customers, or understand their specific problems. Ask how often that manager sees technicians in the field, where the manager is based, and how to reach them directly. If the answer is a call center number, that is a legitimate business model that some fleets prefer — but the carrier should understand which model they are purchasing.

The Documentation Exposure Most Carriers Miss

A compliance issue underpins all of this, and it is the element most likely to affect a small operator.

Kyle noted that the Department of Transportation can audit a carrier's DOT inspections and request copies of the certifications held by the technician who performed them. A carrier who collected those records at the outset of the relationship already has them. A carrier who did not is left calling a vendor mid-audit. Under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Compliance, Safety, Accountability program, maintenance-related violations contribute directly to a carrier's CSA scores, which in turn affect insurance costs, shipper relationships, and the threshold for further intervention.

His second point concerns what carriers do with a passing inspection. A unit can pass inspection and still carry write-ups — brake pads flagged as wearing, items noted for attention before the next service interval. Kyle observed that carriers see the pass, file the paperwork, and move on. He was blunt in his advice: do not wait for that part to fail.

Kevin added that Coltrain retains preventive maintenance sheets, DOT documents, and repair records on its own systems, and that carriers do call requesting copies of inspections they have lost. For a two-truck operation without a dedicated maintenance manager, that recordkeeping function is part of what is being purchased.

Where the Argument Actually Lands

When asked at what point a small carrier should stop performing its own maintenance, Kyle rejected the return-on-investment framing.

His answer shifted to the road itself. He described a wheel-off event or an accident, and the reality that his own family drives alongside these vehicles every day. Coltrain's internal mantra is "defend the road." The brothers' shared perspective is that a loaded tractor-trailer traveling at 70 miles per hour is not a cost center to be optimized to the last dollar.

Deferred maintenance is typically the first expense cut when money is tight. That is precisely when the consequences are most severe.

Why It Matters

The failures the Coltrains describe are not caused by bad technicians. They stem from clocks set too short and hiring quotas set too high — which means a carrier evaluating a maintenance provider is fundamentally evaluating whether that provider's growth model leaves adequate time to perform the work. The questions that reveal this are free and require ten minutes: How many technicians does the local manager oversee? Can I see your certifications? Can you produce point-level proof that the inspection was performed?