Vehicles You Are Paying For and Not Using

Every fleet has vehicles that barely move. They cost the same as the ones that do.

What a vehicle costs when parked

Finance or depreciation, which continues.

Insurance.

Road tax and any licensing.

Depot space.

Scheduled servicing by calendar, which is another argument for servicing by usage.

The only cost that stops is fuel, which for a light commercial vehicle is a minority of the total.

Measuring utilisation honestly

Days used against days available, per vehicle, over a quarter.

Not average distance, which hides a vehicle that does one long trip a month.

Segment by type, because a specialist vehicle used twice a month may be correctly retained and a general van used twice a month is not.

And exclude the ones off the road for repair, which is a different problem.

What the pattern usually shows

A long tail: most vehicles used most days, and a group used rarely.

Spares that became permanent, acquired for a peak that passed.

Vehicles assigned to a person rather than to work, which is a status arrangement rather than an operational one.

Depot imbalance: one site short and another with idle vehicles, which is a redistribution rather than a purchase.

What to do with the finding

Redistribute before disposing, because the shortage at another site is usually real.

Pool rather than assign, where the work allows, which raises utilisation across the board.

Hire for genuine peaks instead of owning for them, and compare the hire cost against the annual cost of ownership rather than against the daily rate.

Dispose, last, and with the whole-life figures rather than a hunch.

The seasonal caution

A quarter is not a year.

A vehicle idle in February may be essential in July, and disposing on a quarter's data is how a fleet ends up hiring at peak rates.

Measure across a full cycle before disposing, and use the quarterly figure for redistribution only.

The measure

Utilisation distribution, per vehicle type, per quarter.

Vehicles below a stated threshold, listed by name.

And the annual cost of that list, which is the number that gets attention and is available from the finance system in an afternoon.

Redistribute before disposing

The finding underneath the finding.

A fleet with idle vehicles at one site usually has a shortage at another.

Which is a transfer rather than a purchase, and cheaper than either site's preferred solution.

Check the work first, because a vehicle idle at one depot may be specialist and useless at the other.

Connect policy and data

The choices in this note can be compared with workforce optimisation software for fleet teams. Keep the written purpose in control and enable only the information needed at this boundary.