October 2, 2023

Fleet Budgets Struggle to Cope With Increasing Costs [Watch]

Bookmark +

The State of the Fleet Industry video series, produced by Automotive Fleet, offers insights into the state of the fleet market as presented by AF Editor Mike Antich.

In Episode 141, learn more about the top factors contributing to increasing costs in the commercial fleet market, as presented by AF Editor Mike Antich.

🎙Today's topics include:

While cost containment has been a top priority since the birth of the fleet industry, today, it has gained even greater urgency since fleet is more expensive than ever.
When you examine fleet cost increases in their totality, the fleet industry is experiencing a simultaneous convergence of many different cost trends.
The top six cost trends examined are:
- Higher acquisition costs and the minimal or non-existent availability of fleet incentives.
- Inflationary pressures on all goods and services, higher interest rates, and higher fuel prices.
- Ongoing sourcing constraints primarily due to restrictive OEM ordering allocation systems that preclude fleets from getting all the replacement units they need.
- As the average age of fleet vehicles in service increases, so does the frequency of unscheduled maintenance incidents and PM expenses as older vehicles enter new PM intervals, often requiring replacing wear items such as tires and brakes.
- Higher rental expenses due to unpredictable OTD and slower maintenance turnaround due to replacement parts shortages.
- Increase in tolls, dollar amount for parking fines, miscellaneous environmental disposal fees for tires and motor oil, and assorted property taxes on fleet assets.

This episode is sponsored by U.S. Bank.