Best practices for fleet maintenance tend to shift with larger transportation industry changes. For example, when supply chains were constricted during the pandemic, fleets needed to spend more time maintaining the vehicles they had. But while parts supply issues are still hitting some fleets in 2024, Fleetio, a fleet management and maintenance software provider, found that the average truck age is skewing young again.
The 2024 Fleet Benchmarking Report, which includes an online version that was updated with H1 2024 numbers beyond the downloadable version's January release values, drew from aggregate customer data of a variety of vehicles ranging from compact vehicles and heavy-duty trucks. Overall, Fleetio found that 45% of 120,425 vehicles were 1 to 4 years old. In June 2024, the American Transportation Research Institute found that the average truck age was 3.8 years in 2023, a 19% drop from the 4.7 year average in 2022.
On a more granular level, Fleetio’s report offered some insight into average service costs per job.
"The benchmarking report is helpful to identify large-scale trends over time, rather than drawing assumptions of small movements on individual items," said Belinda Rueffer, vice president of marketing at Fleetio. "These numbers provide fleets with a baseline to determine current market averages for common services."
These included everything from brakes and engine work to tire costs. For example, the organization reported in the downloadable version of the report that tire costs were generally cheapest for tire rotations, but at their most expensive for full tire replacements:
- Tire rotation: $17.70
- Flat repair: $19.62
- Tire mount/Dismount: $31.81
- Tire replacement: $452.27
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Beyond tires, service prices become more expensive, especially for critical jobs that keep trucks on the road. For instance, in 2023, one of the most common brake violations in the U.S. for CVSA’s International Roadcheck included 20% defective brakes. Here’s the average cost of some of the jobs to make a brake serviceable again:
- Caliper replacement: $238.63
- Brake pad replacement (set of 2): $156.71
- Brake rotor/Disc replacement: $305.10
- Replacement brake fluid: $89.59
- Brake shoe replacement: $311.22
Additionally, Fleetio noted that fleet cost per mile tends to increase year over year as a vehicle ages. A vehicle that’s one year old runs a CPM of 36 cents, while an eight-year-old truck reaches 57 cents. Of course, this serves to increase maintenance costs as well.
“Maintenance costs increase as vehicles age and require more frequent repairs such as brakes, tires and batteries,” the report explained. “The cost of scheduled maintenance may also rise as vehicles gain more mileage.”
With these costs in mind, it follows that maintenance is the second-largest budgetary allocation for fleets, with Fleetio noting that maintenance accounts for 22% of a fleet’s budget.
So, how can fleets manage some of these maintenance costs? Adhering to a preventative maintenance schedule, even on your newest vehicle, is a key place to start.
“It might seem advantageous to only schedule maintenance when it’s 100% necessary, but a few diagnostic fees every 2,000 miles are way easier to swallow than a one-time emergency engine repair,” Fleetio’s report stated. Especially when engine controls diagnostics average at $192.70 and engine control modules average at $533.78.
An effort to cut some of those costs may lead to a rise in outsourced maintenance work, too. Although most of Fleetio’s respondents (58%) still do their maintenance in-house, 42% have outsourced. In the National Private Truck Council’s (NPTC) 2021 Benchmarking Survey Report, 46% of private fleet respondents outsourced all their maintenance.
“Uptime is the No. 1 reason we see fleets using outsourced maintenance,” said Eric Daniels, vice president of truck care for Love’s Travel Stops in a 2022 interview on outsourcing maintenance. “Out-of-route miles and driver downtime cost money and put a strain on already tight schedules, and these issues can be avoided by using outsourced maintenance providers.”
Whether outsourced or in-house, Fleetio reported that the average time to resolve a vehicle issue is currently 1.68 days.
