Companies with own vehicle fleet for freight transport try to carry out the requested transport volume, with lowest possible transportation and maintenance costs. In order to make energy efficient and rational, the vehicle fleet operation the influence of the maintenance management has been considered in this paper. In this sense, a concept of maintenance management with a comprehensive approach has been developed. Within proposed concept the interdependent influences between vehicle maintenance process, transport process and environment as well have been described in detail, and the maintenance management activities on the strategical, tactical and operational level have been presented. The proposed concept was implemented in a company with vehicle fleet. Improvements were made in the vehicle fleet operation, which contributed to the reduction of transport and maintenance costs, whereby the requested transport volume in the observed period was performed.