Truck maintenance cost: how to calculate it per km

Knowing truck maintenance cost in fleet management is essential to plan services, purchases and the maintenance budget.

If you consider maintenance very expensive and believe reducing costs has become impractical, you may be facing an issue with control, routines or operational priorities.

Besides hindering cost control, a lack of maintenance compromises driver, cargo and other road user safety. Read on:

• What truck maintenance costs;
• How to control truck maintenance cost;
• Ways to reduce truck fleet maintenance costs.

What does truck maintenance cost?

There is no exact answer to this question: you must identify the amount by vehicle type, application and model. Ideally, each license plate should have its own account for more reliable cost comparisons.

Truck maintenance includes various amounts, from purchasing replacement parts to vehicle servicing.

It also includes inventory costs, vehicle washing and interior cleaning, preventive and corrective service labor, and process tools such as electronic checklists and maintenance systems.

With so many factors to add, giving a precise truck maintenance cost is difficult. Calculate individually for each license plate in your truck fleet.

Each truck also has its own characteristics affecting overall performance.

How do you calculate truck maintenance cost?

The most common calculation is maintenance cost per kilometer driven:

Maintenance spending in the period / Km driven in the period = Maintenance cost per km driven

For a useful indicator, use the same period for costs and mileage, separate expenses by license plate and record what was included. This avoids comparing a vehicle with incomplete history against one with every service recorded.

How do you know if truck maintenance costs are high?

An efficient approach is to calculate annual maintenance spending and compare it with a reference such as vehicle replacement or purchase value.

For example, in Brazil, if the truck cost R$230,000 to buy and used R$6,000 of maintenance budget over the year, the percentage is 2.6%.

This percentage alone must not be treated as a universal rule for renewing or retaining the fleet. Read it alongside vehicle age, operation type, availability, consumption, recurring failures and maintenance history. As an asset management reference, MC/RAV measures annual maintenance cost divided by replacement asset value, expressed as a percentage.

Another indicator to monitor…

Truck maintenance cost can also be classified and monitored through the operation's own financial indicators, provided the company makes its reference basis clear.

Instead of adopting a fixed average without context, compare maintenance spending with revenue, mileage, asset value and fleet historical patterns. This combination helps distinguish a one-off fluctuation from a cost pattern needing investigation.

What does truck maintenance cost by maintenance type?

Each vehicle may receive different amounts of maintenance services, making an exact answer difficult.

A truck of one model may receive 2 preventive services and 1 corrective service in a month, while another may receive 3 corrective services and 1 preventive service, and so on.

You can still separate spending by maintenance type to understand fleet budget consumption. A practical analysis separates:

• Preventive maintenance: planned services, inspections, servicing and scheduled replacements.
• Corrective maintenance: repairs after a failure, breakdown or identified defect.
• Predictive maintenance: actions based on asset condition data to estimate when failure may occur.

Remaining amounts may appear in supporting groups such as spare parts, inventory, washing, interior cleaning, tools and administrative labor. Avoid mixing categories, since the same part can belong to preventive, corrective or another service.

How do you control truck maintenance cost?

To identify truck maintenance cost and maintain good control of fleet finances and assets, you need a maintenance plan and must follow its routine.

You should also use the most appropriate tools for this purpose.

These include a maintenance management system, which helps record and control fleet maintenance costs. It can also support plans by vehicle type, opening work orders by mileage or date and following up on issues noted in team-completed checklists.

Ways to reduce truck fleet maintenance costs

Create and follow the fleet maintenance schedule

Especially one including the schedule and activities for truck preventive maintenance, a foundation for reducing avoidable vehicle costs. This includes regular oil changes and checking tires, brakes, suspension and other vehicle parts.

Besides following the manufacturer's plan, record each completed and outstanding task. In Brazil, the Brazilian Traffic Code says vehicles may only circulate when they meet the safety requirements and conditions established in the Code and CONTRAN rules.

Use quality parts in services

Choosing quality parts when replacing truck components is also important.

Although cheaper parts may seem economical in the short term, they can cost more over time because of shorter useful life or damage to other vehicle components from not being original factory parts.

The same reasoning applies to supplies and routine checks: using the manufacturer-recommended oil grade can improve fuel economy, and correctly calibrated tires are safer and last longer. Compare tire pressure with the vehicle or manual recommendation, preferably with cold tires.

Explain and teach maintenance best practices

All drivers and employees should know their tasks and responsibilities, helping vehicle and maintenance management be effective and deliver the expected result: lower operating costs.

This guidance also helps standardize records. Consistent entries of failures, symptoms, date, responsible person and service performed give managers history to compare license plates, understand recurrence and prioritize maintenance plan needs.

Start with a maintenance control spreadsheet

If you are taking the first steps in fleet maintenance control, you can start with a spreadsheet and learn how these management processes work.

A spreadsheet is a low-cost tool that improves organization in the fleet maintenance department. See this template, available free to download and start using.