FLEET REPAIR-OR-REPLACE PLANNER · RUNS IN YOUR BROWSER · NOTHING UPLOADED

Is it cheaper to repair or replace it this year?

Add one row per van, truck or machine you are deciding about. The planner costs out keeping it — last year's repair spend plus the revenue you lost on the days it was off the road — against replacing it, then ranks the whole fleet by annual saving per dollar of capital and fills the budget you have.

The repair invoices are the visible number and usually the smaller one. See why downtime decides this for the two-minute version.

Nothing is uploaded. Your figures are read in this browser and never leave your device — see the privacy note in the footer. Weighing a lease buyout instead of a cash purchase? The equipment lease buyout calculator does that one asset in more depth; this page decides which of several assets to act on at all.

This planner vs. paid fleet management software — what a per-vehicle monthly subscription tracks that this free worksheet does not, and does.

This planner vs. a spreadsheet — the two formulas a hand-built version most often gets wrong, and what runs the same way every time here.

This planner vs. comparing the repair bill to a new price — what the default comparison leaves out.

Add a vehicle or machine

This year's capital budget

What you can actually spend on replacements this year. Leave it at 0 for no stated limit — every asset that pays will then be selected.

The plan

No assets added yet — add one above, or load the example.

What this does and doesn't do

Keeping an asset costs you its repair spend plus the revenue lost on the days it was out of service. Replacing it costs you the net capital that actually leaves the business — replacement price minus trade-in — spread straight-line over the years of service you expect, plus what the replacement still costs to run. Replacing wins when the first total is larger.

It does not appraise your equipment, know your tax position, depreciation schedule or financing terms, or model interest, inflation and the time value of money. The budget ranking is a heuristic — annual saving per dollar of capital, filled in that order — not a guaranteed-optimal subset. Confirm every quote and trade-in figure in writing before committing capital.

The assumptions, stated

Common questions

Is it cheaper to repair or replace a work truck?

It depends on two numbers most owners compare and one they usually leave out. Repairing costs you the annual repair spend plus the revenue lost on the days the vehicle is off the road. Replacing costs you the net capital you lay out (replacement price minus trade-in) spread over the years of service it buys, plus whatever the new vehicle still costs to run. Replacing is cheaper when the first total is larger than the second. The number that gets left out is downtime: a van in the shop is billable days your crew could not work, and for a crew billing several hundred dollars a day that frequently exceeds the repair invoice that got all the attention.

How do you work out the annual cost of replacing a vehicle?

Take the replacement price, subtract the trade-in or resale value to get the net capital actually leaving the business, and divide that by the number of years of service you expect from the replacement. That gives an equivalent annual cost for the capital. Then add the running costs the new asset still has — its own expected repairs and any downtime you still expect. This planner does that arithmetic straight-line and undiscounted, so you can check it on paper; it does not model financing interest, so add your own cost of borrowing if you would finance the purchase.

What is a good payback period on replacing equipment?

Payback is the net capital divided by the annual repair and downtime spend that replacing stops — the cash you actually stop paying out, not the equivalent-annual-cost comparison, which already has the capital inside it. This planner calls out anything paying back inside three years as a strong case, because that is comfortably inside the service life of most vehicles and machines and leaves room for the input estimates to be somewhat wrong. A payback longer than the expected service life means the asset does not pay to replace on these numbers at all. Payback deliberately ignores the time value of money, so treat it as a screening measure rather than a financing decision.

How do I choose which vehicles to replace when I cannot afford all of them?

Rank them by annual saving per dollar of capital rather than by the size of the saving or the age of the asset. An older vehicle with a large repair bill can still be the wrong one to replace first if the replacement is expensive and the trade-in is worthless. This planner sorts your assets that way and fills the capital budget you enter in that order, then shows what deferring the rest costs you per year so you can weigh it against what the extra capital would cost to borrow.

Is this planner financial advice?

No. It performs arithmetic on the numbers you enter. It does not appraise your equipment, does not know your tax position, depreciation schedule or financing terms, and does not decide anything on your behalf. Confirm replacement quotes and trade-in values in writing and take the worksheet, not the recommendation, to whoever advises you.