Truck maintenance costs 10% more than a year ago, owing to the higher wages for service technicians and the aging of equipment because of the supply chain crisis.
A service event benchmark study released during the American Trucking Associations’ Technology and Maintenance Council meeting in Orlando, Florida, found:
“The North American economy continues to impact parts and labor costs for fleets in several ways,” said Dick Hyatt, Decisiv president and CEO. Decisiv has the industry’s largest asset service management system.
Powertrain expenses topped all areas of spending at 36.8%, followed by exhaust systems at 14.9%. Brakes accounted for 5% of costs.
The brake expense may reflect increased miles driven as fleets are keeping trucks on the road beyond typical 4-to-5-year trade-in cycles because of the lack of availability of new trucks due to the semiconductor shortage and other component scarcity. Engine and exhaust repairs could be increasing as warranty coverages expire with higher miles on the odometer.
Higher labor costs result from both additional repairs to higher-mileage vehicles and the fierce competition in the labor market to attract and retain service technicians.
The Decisiv/TMC North American Service Event Benchmark reports are generated using data from the Decisiv SRM platform on service and repairs for more than 7 million commercial assets in the U.S. and Canada. The asset service management system manages a weekly average of 70,000 service events at nearly 5,000 locations.
Separately, a state of heavy-duty repair report issued by Fullbay found:
The data in the report is based on survey responses from more than 900 individuals across all aspects of the commercial freight, logistics and repair industries.
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