Dana has launched its total-cost-ownership calculator to help fleets and independent operators make cost comparisons between traditional diesel platforms and full-electric powertrain solutions.
Hennepin County, Minn., could reduce emissions and save money by downsizing and electrifying its light-duty fleet, a recent report found.
A truck’s total cost of ownership (TCO) covers a specific range of expense variables, regardless of the make or model. The four lifecycle categories that influence TCO are fixed costs, operating expenses, incidental costs, and depreciation/resale value. A key factor that drives these lifecycle categories is a vehicle’s service life.
If you want to provide added value to your company, you need to view fleet as a business and not simply an aggregation of assets to be managed cost-effectively. The fastest way to improve your bottom line is to increase fleet utilization, which increases the productivity of each individual truck.
Calculating the cost of operating an electric vehicle can be complicated because electricity prices fluctuate far more frequently than diesel fuel.
The stability of fuel pricing over the past 36 months, along with ongoing improvements in vehicle fuel economy, have been the key factors keeping fleet operating costs relatively flat.
Senior management exerts intense pressure on fleet managers to control and/or reduce vehicle acquisition and operating expenses. To accomplish this, a fleet managers can pursue three different cost-control strategies — cost savings, cost deferral, or cost avoidance. In order to implement a successful cost-control strategy you need to institutionalize the mechanisms to curb money-wasting behaviors.
Depreciation is a necessary evil in our industry. Knowing your risks and knowing your OEM partners won’t make depreciation go away but it can make it more manageable.
The fundamental requirements of your business necessitates minimum fleet equipment specifications that, as a result, pre-define the expense parameters from both a fixed and operating cost perspective. If you acquire vehicle assets that best fulfill your fleet application, then any supplemental cost reduction will only be based on incremental refinements The best way to achieve additional cost reduction is by modifying driver behavior.
As a wear item, tires are a depreciating asset. Your job, as the fleet manager, is to slow the rate of depreciation. Replacement tires as a cost category are a fleet’s second-largest operating expense, exceeded only by fuel. By maximizing tire tread life, you lower per-mile costs, resulting in fewer premature removals and optimizing the condition of tire casings, allowing for multiple retreads.