Fleet Advantage, a provider of equipment financing and cost management to private fleets, has released its inaugural quarterly index resource “designed to compare all-in costs of older model year Class 8 trucks and calculate the savings of new model replacements.” 

Using insight from the company’s ATLAAS program (Advanced Truck Lifecycle Administrative Analytics Software), Fleet Advantage said the data index will help “industry professionals make decisions regarding equipment replacement timing.”

Taking into account all-in operating costs of fuel, finance, maintenance and repair, and tires, the index calculates that companies would save approximately $18,081 per truck in the first 12 months of operation by upgrading from a 2011 model-year vehicle to a 2017 model and reduce their CO2 emissions by 14%.

The calculations assume an operation running 100,000 miles per year and a previous 3-month average diesel price of $2.08.

“The industry now has concrete data available that can impact the bottom line in ways never before achievable,” said John Rickette, Fleet Advantage’s vice president of Transaction Management. “By leveraging the latest in business intelligence and analytics software linked to every vehicle in a fleet, we can offer insights that drive profitability throughout the operation.”

Fleet Advantage said the data index equips fleet operators with financial and valuation insights required to determine when each truck has become “economically obsolete” and the proper timing for when to replace it with a new, more efficient and less costly model.

The proprietary ATLAAS software and its data index were developed out of Fleet Advantage’s lifecycle business model, which the company said “helps truck fleet operators save millions in savings by replacing older vehicles and shifting their current lifecycle practices to a data-driven model.”

Below is the comparison obtained for day cabs:

And here is the comparison for sleepers: