Fleet replacement planning
Replacement is a scheduling problem more than a purchasing one. Upfit lead times run to months, so a business that starts looking on the day a truck fails has already lost its negotiating position.
Set the trigger in advance
Decide now what will tell you a vehicle needs replacing — an age, a mileage, or a reliability threshold such as two unscheduled workshop visits in a quarter — and begin the process when you hit it rather than when the situation becomes urgent.
Urgency is expensive in two directions at once. It narrows your purchase to whatever happens to be available, and it removes your ability to hold out for a fair price on the vehicle you are selling.
Read the full replacement guide →Count downtime, not repair invoices
The repair bill is visible and the stopped truck is not, which is why fleets consistently optimise the wrong one. Work out what a day of unplanned downtime costs you — lost billable work, idle crew, whatever you did to cover the gap — and most replacement decisions answer themselves against that figure.
Sequencing the sale
Selling before the replacement arrives leaves you without a vehicle. Selling after means carrying two, with two sets of insurance and registration. Given how often delivery slips on a chassis waiting for a body, most businesses find a few weeks of overlap cheaper than a gap — and it removes the pressure to accept a poor price because you need the old truck gone.
Cycling several at once
A group of similar vehicles in similar condition is a different sale from a single truck, and it attracts a different sort of buyer. It is also an opportunity to reconsider standardisation: whether one chassis bodied several ways would simplify parts, technician knowledge and driver familiarity across the fleet.
Staggering replacements rather than replacing everything at once smooths both the cash requirement and the risk of every vehicle ageing out in the same year.
Tell us what you are cycling out →