Repair costs climbing, but so is mileage between repairs

Parts, labor and overall repair costs are soaring for truck fleets, but an increased emphasis on preventive maintenance is stretching out mileage between breakdowns.

Those were some key findings from a pair of benchmarking reports conducted by the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) of the American Trucking Associations, and its data collection partners Decisiv and FleetNet America.

Mark Wasilko, vice-president of marketing with service management platform Decisiv, says his company records about a million service events per quarter. Using VMRS codes, it identifies trends related to repair costs.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, average parts costs increased 2.72%, labor 3.71%, and parts and labor combined rose 3.71%.

More shocking are year-over-year comparisons, with labor costs up 14.26%, parts up 8.77%, and parts and labor combined up 10.81% compared to the fourth quarter in 2020.

“That’s an ugly trend,” said Wasilko during a TMC press conference. By VMRS code, the most expensive repair costs were related to powerplant (36.8%), exhaust systems (14.9%), and brakes (5%).

In a separate benchmarking report conducted by FleetNet America, which looks at average repair costs and mileage between repairs, Paul Gildenhorn, FleetNet’s vice-president of sales, noted some interesting trends.

Strangely, total fleet miles decreased in the fourth quarter of 2021 compared to the previous quarter. He attributed this to supply chain shortages that pulled peak holiday shipping season forward.

But the study also noted a sharp increase in miles between breakdowns in the fourth quarter – 42,559, marking the longest stretch seen in two years. Gildenhorn says this could be because of an increased emphasis on preventive maintenance being forced on fleets who are having to run equipment longer due to supply chain shortages that have made procuring new trucks difficult.

“Fleets are having to spend more time paying closer attention to their PM programs than ever before,” said Gildenhorn. “They’ve had to make that equipment last.”

FleetNet also uses VMRS codes to categorize breakdowns. It found the top five codes represented 67% of total repairs: tires, brakes, powerplant, cranking system, and exhaust systems. The complete reports are available through TMC.