Torek Engine hours tracking
Updated
An engine hour is one hour of engine running time. For construction, road and agricultural machinery it is a more accurate measure of wear than either distance or the calendar, because it counts only the work that actually happened.
Torek keeps engine hours on each asset record and builds maintenance schedules from them the same way it does from kilometres or elapsed time. Each maintenance rule has one interval — kilometres, engine hours, days or months; when two limits matter, the unit gets two rules, each tracking its own due date, so a mixed fleet is managed in a single system.
A fixed interval — “every three months” — ignores how much the machine actually worked. The result is two mistakes at once:
| Lightly used machine | Heavily used machine | |
|---|---|---|
| Per quarter | ~30 engine hours | ~180 engine hours |
| Calendar maintenance | Carried out for no reason | Carried out too late |
| The cost | Oil, filters and downtime that were not needed | A wider window in which something can fail |
Maintenance by engine hours removes both mistakes with one change.
Mileage from approved trip logs and the readings entered with fill-ups and services build one meter history per vehicle, and preventive-maintenance due dates are forecast from it. Trip logs only ever add kilometres; engine hours enter the history in four places:
| Where it is entered | What happens to the reading |
|---|---|
| A pre-use inspection on the phone | Stored for that machine; without a signal it waits on the phone and is sent when the connection returns |
| A fuel fill-up, in the app or the browser | Stored with the date of the fill; a fill flagged as an error writes none |
| Checking off a work order’s planned parts | Taken in the same step, in engine hours by default for machinery, and stored with the job as its source |
| Closing a planned service | Recorded in engine hours when the rule counts engine hours, linked to its work order when it has one |
Every reading keeps a whole number of hours, the time it was taken, who entered it and where it came from. A fill-up typed in a week late slots into the history at its own date and never winds the machine’s current figure back.
An engine-hour rule only reads engine-hour readings — a kilometre reading from the same tractor never moves it. Take a loader with a rule of every 500 engine hours whose previous service was scheduled at 4,000:
Three cases follow from the same arithmetic. A machine whose meter has not climbed over those 90 days — standing in the yard — gets no date until it works again. A machine already past its threshold gets a schedule dated today. And until the schedule exists, the date is recalculated every day from the latest readings; once created, it stays fixed unless it is postponed.
Every day the system builds preventive-maintenance schedules from readings and rules and notifies the people responsible about what is coming up or overdue; a scheduled item becomes a work order in one step. A machine never holds two open schedules for the same rule.
Most fleets run both trucks and self-propelled machinery, and applying one measure to both leaves one group without a real plan:
A machine with both meters — a tractor that also runs on the road — can carry a kilometre rule and an engine-hour rule, and each follows only its own readings. Readings themselves are kept as a dated history per asset, so a corrected or re-read meter never silently rewrites what came before.
Fuel consumption is calculated from fill-ups only: between two full tanks, using the odometer or engine-hour reading entered with each fill-up. For machinery the result is litres per engine hour, set against a norm per engine hour. The monthly fuel write-off document shows a machine’s engine hours at the start and the end of the month, the hours run between them, and the fuel the norm allows for those hours next to what was actually used (see fuel tracking).
A work order raised from a maintenance schedule lands in the same queue as breakdowns in the work order system, so planned and unplanned work share one list. The reading taken when a job closes is stored with that job as its source, so the repair history keeps the engine-hour count at which each service was done. Readings are not entered at the shared workshop kiosk, which is limited to job queues and defect reports. Intervals, reminders and overdue work are covered on the preventive maintenance page, and for excavators and loaders specifically there is heavy equipment maintenance.
One hour of engine running time. It is not the same as time spent on site: the counter only moves while the machine is actually working.
For an excavator or a loader, engine hours are the primary measure of wear, because distance travelled says almost nothing about how hard they have been used.
No. Engine hours can be entered by hand — usually the operator or the mechanic reads them off together with everything else they are recording.
If a telematics system is already in place it tracks the figure automatically, and the reading can simply be entered from there. Torek works either way; it is a maintenance system, not a tracking one.
Trucks are normally measured in kilometres and construction or agricultural machinery in engine hours. Each maintenance rule has one interval — kilometres, engine hours, days or months; when two limits matter, the unit gets two rules, each tracking its own due date.
Up to 60 days: a schedule is created on the first day its forecast date falls within that range. In the managers’ daily summary it then counts as due soon during the three days before its date and as late once the date has passed; the schedule itself is marked overdue seven days after the date.
No. Voiding a fill-up takes its engine-hour reading out of the meter history as well, so neither the fuel figures nor the maintenance forecast use it. Lifting the void puts the reading back.
A walkthrough with your own intervals and meter readings.
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