Maintenance and repair cost fleets $0.171 per mile – or $6.72 an hour – according to the American Transportation Research Institute’s APRI) report, An Analysis of the Operations Costs of Trucking: 2019 Update. That’s about 9% of their total annual marginal costs of operation, which is up 2.4% from the year before.
The higher cost of diagnosing, repairing and maintaining today’s trucks with their sophisticated components was one reason ATRI listed for the increased cost of maintenance. The higher cost of labor was another, and neither of those costs are expected to decrease in the near term.
As a result, most fleets are already paying a lot of attention to their maintenance and repair costs, but many just look at aggregate numbers. They know how much they are spending fleet-wide on maintenance and repair, but may not understand what they are spending on an individual truck.
While knowing total maintenance and repair cost is helpful, it can be even more beneficial to know what maintenance and repair costs on an asset class basis, a unit basis and a component basis.
In order to do that, you need to track each and every maintenance and repair cost associated with a particular asset. I suggest capturing at least the VMRS Systems Code (or equivalent) to catalog expenses by unit and by component (brakes, lights, tires, charging and starting, etc.). Another important datapoint is the technician’s notes, or sometimes referred to the three C’s: Complaint, Cause and Correction. This provides more detailed information right from the technician.
It’s also important to know the reason a vehicle was in for service. Catalog the reason for the repair includes categories like DVIR, accident damage, road call, theft, PM, routine repair, rework, etc. The collection of these datapoints, and the various combinations of reporting, can provide a wealth of knowledge.
It is very important to track every preventive maintenance service and all repairs that took place between PM services, along with any roadside service event. You need to include service events from your internal shop and from any outsourced service providers you use.
