What does vehicle downtime cost your fleet?
A vehicle off the road stops earning and keeps costing. Insurance, financing, and depreciation don't pause while it waits on a shop that hasn't called back.
Total vehicles in the fleet.
Industry range is 15–30% inactive at any given time.
Conservative −5pp · Base −8pp · Strong −12pp.
Lost revenue plus insurance, financing, and depreciation. Fleets typically lose $500–$1,500 per vehicle per day off-road.
The average new vehicle runs ~$50K — the basis for the ‘buy more vehicles’ comparison.
Fleets typically pay 15–20% to finance new vehicles.
Scales with fleet size ($3.5K–$10K/mo). Replaces the human admin role ($80–120K/yr).
Volume pricing, $10–20 per vehicle per month.
Ready when you are.
Your fleet size and what a vehicle costs you off the road set the baseline. The target inactive rate sets what Autograff recovers. The rest prices the alternative — buying that capacity instead.
Set them on the left, then calculate. We'll keep a copy so we can pick up where your numbers leave off.
Vehicle downtime costs a fleet its idle vehicles multiplied by what one vehicle costs per day off the road, across a year — for most fleets a figure in the hundreds of thousands, and most of it sitting in capacity already paid for.
How this calculator works
It starts with your fleet size and your inactive rate — the share of vehicles not available on a given day, for any reason. Those two give the number of vehicles idle right now. Multiply that by your cost per vehicle per day and by 365, and you have what idleness costs you in a year.
The second half asks what a lower inactive rate would be worth. Set a target rate and the calculator works out how many vehicles that recovers, what the same capacity would cost to buy instead, and what financing that purchase would add each year. Those two routes to the same availability are the comparison worth making.
Where the $500–$1,500 range comes from
It is what fleet operators typically report, not a figure from a published study, and it covers three things at once: the revenue the vehicle would have earned, the fixed costs that accrue whether it moves or not — financing, insurance, depreciation — and whatever you spend covering for it, such as a rental or a driver on the clock with nothing to drive.
The spread is wide because duty cycles are. A van on a fixed delivery route and a specialist truck a contract depends on sit at opposite ends of it. Your own figure is the one to use; the range is only there to tell you whether you are in the right order of magnitude. The full method is worked through here.
Why the inactive rate is the lever
Cost per day is close to fixed: it is set by what the vehicle earns and what it owes, and no software changes either. Fleet size is a capital decision. That leaves the inactive rate as the one term in the calculation a fleet can move without spending anything — which is why a percentage point of it is worth more than it looks.
Where the recoverable days actually are
Rarely in the wrench time. A repair that takes four hours of labor can hold a vehicle for a week, and the difference is waiting: an estimate sitting unapproved, a part ordered later than it could have been, or a job that lost its place in the bay schedule and has to be re-slotted.
Those three have different owners and different fixes, and at least one of them — approval time — sits entirely on the fleet's side of the line. That is the part worth measuring first, because it is the part you control.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate what downtime costs my fleet?
What should I put for cost per vehicle per day?
Why does the calculator compare this to buying vehicles?
What is inactive rate, and what is a realistic target?
Why doesn't this include the cost of the repair itself?
FleetOS is the fleet maintenance software behind these numbers: every vehicle, every repair in progress, and how long each one has been waiting.
Put your fleet's numbers to the test.
Book a 20-minute demo and we'll walk through FleetOS on your fleet size and downtime — where the recoverable days are, and what they're worth.
Book a demo