How do you monitor operating hours of vehicles and machinery?
Monitoring operating hours across the entire vehicle and machinery fleet. There are several reasons for this: maintenance and inspections, invoicing and emissions.
In this article we explain what operating hours actually are, why they are becoming increasingly important, and how companies measure them in practice, with or without a power supply.
September 1, 2026
Een content subheading
3 min read
What are operating hours?
Operating hours are the hours during which the engine of a vehicle or machine runs. For equipment that rarely moves, such as an excavator, a wheel loader or a generator, operating hours say more about the actual load than kilometres or contact hours do. Operating hours are the reference point for, among other things, maintenance, inspections and emissions calculations.
Why is it becoming increasingly important to track operating hours?
Operating hours registration is more relevant than it was a few years ago, for several reasons: emission requirements, the desire to plan maintenance more intelligently, and more accurate invoicing.
Calculating emissions
Operating hours form the basis for CO2, NOx and NH3 reporting. More and more tenders in construction and infrastructure require demonstrable emissions figures: think of the CO2 Performance Ladder, and the obligation to calculate nitrogen deposition using AERIUS before the start of a project. New calculation methods, such as the one from TNO, make it possible to calculate these figures more precisely based on actual use. Without registration of operating hours per vehicle or machine, that reporting remains an estimate.
Maintenance and inspections
Planning maintenance based on a fixed interval, for example every six months, does not take into account how intensively a vehicle or machine has actually been used. Condition-based maintenance looks at actual operating hours, not the calendar. This prevents both premature maintenance and a missed inspection deadline. For equipment subject to a statutory inspection obligation, that difference is directly measurable in downtime and fines.
Accurate invoicing
Operating hours give a more accurate picture of the actual use of a vehicle or machine than a fixed period or an estimate. For example, in rental, billing is often based on operating hours rather than just a fixed period, and maintenance contracts are also regularly linked to a number of operating hours.
Operating hours registration in practice
Operating hours can be tracked in various ways, ranging from fully manual to automatic.
One method is manual registration: on paper or in a spreadsheet. It is error-prone and time-consuming, and a missed reading cannot be recovered afterwards. With a larger vehicle and machinery fleet, this is barely manageable.
For vehicles and machines with an onboard computer, operating hours registration can run automatically via a CAN bus connection. This is accurate, but only works on equipment with its own power supply and CAN bus.
How do you measure operating hours of equipment without a power supply?
For equipment without an onboard computer or its own power supply, such as a generator, a trailer or mounted equipment, asset tags with motion detection are available. As soon as an engine runs, vibration occurs. A motion sensor recognises the difference between standstill and use. This makes automatic operating hours registration possible on virtually any piece of equipment, even without an onboard computer or power supply.
Monitoring operating hours at GPS-Buddy
GPS-Buddy registers operating hours automatically, with or without a power supply, and links that data to solutions such as emissions reporting.
This means operating hours registration is not a standalone figure, but part of the same platform in which vehicles, equipment and project data already come together: Flowter, our Asset Intelligence platform.
Curious how operating hours registration fits your fleet or equipment?
Melanie van den Berg
Online marketeer
Making complex subjects easy to understand, and digging into them myself first: that's what gives me energy. Earlier in my marketing career, I already enjoyed working with companies in construction, infrastructure, and transport. As an online marketer at GPS-Buddy, I'm glad to write about developments in these sectors for the same reason. That same energy goes into writing about our own solutions: how they work, and what that delivers in practice for the people who use them. For every article, I draw on my colleagues' knowledge and do my own thorough research, so each piece is accurate and complete.