The cost of trucking jumped to record highs last year, but maintenance and repair costs appear to have turned a corner.
According to a report released Wednesday by American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council and Decisiv, combined parts and labor expenses fell 1.7% during the first quarter of 2024.
Decisiv President and CEO Dick Hyatt noted an ongoing influx of new trucks and the unkinking of the component supply chain are helping commercial asset service operations realize a widespread drop in parts costs, but a lingering shortage of new technicians entering the workforce continues to drive up labor costs by requiring higher spending to attract and retain qualified help from a shrinking labor pool.
In the first quarter, parts costs were down 2.4%, the second quarterly decline in a row, and labor costs fell 0.8% after two consecutive quarterly increases. On a year-over-year basis, combined costs also dropped 2.3% from the same quarter last year, according to the report. However, labor costs from year-to-year rose 0.9%, although the increase was significantly smaller than the 4.0% bump seen in the previous quarterly report.
The latest Decisiv/TMC North American Service Event Benchmark Report shows service and repair costs across 25 key VMRS systems continued the downward trend seen in the previous quarter when those costs fell 1.4%. Reversing the upward trend seen earlier last year quarter-over-quarter combined parts and labor costs were up in only seven of the 25 VMRS systems, about 50% fewer than the 13 systems in the previous quarter.
Reflecting the data in the report is that the cost of parts rose in seven systems, and labor costs increased in 12 systems, but overall cost decreases were evident for both parts and labor.
In its 2024 Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) found that repair and maintenance costs grew by 3.1% to $0.202 per mile from 2022 to 2023. Based on data compiled from January and February, it climbed another 2% this year.
The data that Decisiv collects and analyzes for the Decisiv/TMC North American Service Event Benchmark Reports on 25 Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standard system level codes accounts for more than 97% of total parts and labor costs for more than seven million assets and over 300,000 monthly maintenance and repair events at more than 5,000 service locations.
