Ask what a day of downtime costs a truck and you will get a number from a trade article, another from an insurer, another from a telematics vendor. They vary widely, and none of them is yours. A fleet running Toledo to Detroit on dedicated lanes and a fleet running irregular route off the Turnpike have different numbers, and so do an owner-operator with one truck and a fleet with forty.
So this is not a number. It is a worksheet. Fill in the blanks with your own figures and you will have a per-truck-per-day downtime cost you can defend to an owner, a controller, or yourself. Then we will show you where the hours go, because hours are the thing a shop can actually change.
Part 1: what the truck earns when it runs
Line A. Revenue per truck per working day. Take last year’s revenue for the unit, or the fleet average, and divide by the days it actually worked. Not calendar days; days it moved freight.
A = ________ per day
Line B. The variable costs you did not spend because it sat: fuel, tolls, per-mile driver pay if that is how you pay. This comes off Line A, because a parked truck does not burn fuel.
B = ________ per day
Line C. Net earning lost per day. A minus B.
C = ________ per day
Part 2: what you pay whether it runs or not
Line D. Truck and trailer payment or lease, per day. The monthly amount divided by working days.
D = ________ per day
Line E. Insurance, plates, permits, IRP and IFTA overhead, parking, telematics subscriptions: the fixed bundle, per day.
E = ________ per day
Line F. Driver cost while the truck is down. If the driver is hourly or salaried and is sitting, it is the full day. If the driver is paid per mile and gets reassigned, it may be close to zero. If you pay breakdown pay or layover to the driver, it goes here.
F = ________ per day
Line G. Fixed cost of a down day. D plus E plus F.
G = ________ per day
Part 3: what the breakdown itself costs
These are per event, not per day. Keep them as a per-event total, then divide by the days the event took when you want a daily figure.
Line H. Tow, if any.
H = ________
Line I. Roadside labor and call-out, if the repair started on the shoulder.
I = ________
Line J. The premium on parts bought at roadside or dealer price instead of shelf price.
J = ________
Line K. Driver hotel, meals, and a second driver or a repower to recover the load.
K = ________
Line L. Substitute capacity: a rental truck, a brokered load, or a lane you handed to another carrier.
L = ________
Line M. Customer cost: a late fee, a missed appointment, a rescheduled dock. If you cannot put a figure on it, write down what the customer said.
M = ________
Line N. Office time. Dispatch, the fleet manager, accounting. Hours spent on the breakdown, times what those hours cost you.
N = ________
Line O. Total event cost. H through N added up.
O = ________
Part 4: the number
Per-truck-per-day downtime cost equals C plus G, plus O divided by the days the truck was down.
Write it down. It is probably bigger than the shop invoice for the repair, and it is the number that decides whether a scheduled PM that takes a truck off the road for half a day on a Tuesday is worth it. It almost always is, because the PM day has no Line O.
Part 5: the only part a shop can change
Look at the formula. C and G are per day. O is mostly per event. So there are two levers: fewer events, and fewer days per event.
Fewer events is preventive maintenance. We covered where that pays in the fleet maintenance post on this blog, and it comes down to catching the air leak, the tire, the battery, the cooling system and the aftertreatment before they become a shoulder.
Fewer days per event is what a shop controls directly. Here is where days get added, and what we do about each:
- Waiting to be seen. A shop that is booked until Thursday adds three days of C and G to every event. During shop hours, a down truck goes to the front of our line. Four technicians, and a bay rotation built so one can be cleared.
- Waiting for diagnosis. A truck that sits while someone finds time to look at it. We pull codes and tell you what it needs before we quote, usually the same day it arrives.
- Waiting for parts. We are a NAPA Truck Care Center with parts on the shelf for the common failures, and the NAPA network behind that for the rest. We tell you the turnaround before we start, and whether the part is here or coming.
- Waiting for approval. Set an approval threshold with us in advance and the tech does not stop work on a brake job to chase a signature.
- The trip to the shop. For fleets in the Toledo area, yard PM from the service truck during shop hours means the PM happens where the truck is parked.
- Sorting out the driver and the load. Sam’s Parking & Storage on the campus for the trailer; Sam’s Travel Center for fuel and the driver; Sam’s 3PL Solutions if the load needs to cross-dock while the tractor is in the bay.
Doing this with your own fleet
Fill in the worksheet for one truck. Then pull the last 12 months of breakdown invoices and count the events and the days. Multiply. That total is what unscheduled downtime cost you last year, in your numbers, and it is what a PM program is competing against.
Bring it to us. We will go through the invoices, mark which events a scheduled service would have caught, and build a PM schedule per unit with the records to back it. Call (419) 724-2475, Monday through Friday 8 to 5, and ask for the fleet program.