Spreadsheets and calculators used to be a common sight in the offices of fleet managers around the country. But the days of painstakingly remembering to include everything from kilometres travelled, fuel used, insurance costs, maintenance costs and a raft of other incidentals, are over thanks to online whole-of-life and optimum replacement calculators.
Online calculators, such as the ones the IPWEA launched last year, help fleet managers with estimating and comparing ‘whole-of-life’ costs for vehicles so they can gain a more accurate picture of vehicle costs over time and make more strategic purchasing decisions.
For Peter Shuttlewood, Manager Procurement and Plant at Mackay Regional Council, using the IPWEA whole-of-life online calculator has taken the guesswork out of managing his heavy vehicle and plant fleet.
“We’ve been using the [guide] for some time when it was provided by IPWEA’s corporate partner Uniqco,” he says. “Previously, it was fairly haphazard as to how the fleet was replaced. If one vehicle was getting a bit old, we’d replace it. The fleet cars were put on a program, but the way we replaced the bigger fleet was fairly reactive instead of having a plan in place.”
However, with the IPWEA online tools, Shuttlewood says he has been able to formulate a 20-year plant plan for the fleet.
“Forward planning financially using the budget figures from the tools and loading them into our fleet management system means we can tell our guys when they will be getting new equipment for the plant, so they can also plan ahead,” he says.
“The benefit is that when you are looking across the fleet you can also see what equipment is being utilised. For example, you know that a truck should be replaced every six years, but if one is not utilised as much as it should, then you look at the benefits of perhaps hiring that piece of equipment over owning it.”
Prior to using the online tools to prepare the budget, the record keeping for plant equipment at Mackay was also haphazard and not plant specific.
“The old system would have just let us know the equipment was getting a bit old and we should look at replacing it. What happened then was that often they were replaced too late,” Shuttlewood says.
“One of the biggest benefits of having a dedicated fleet management system is to our workshop. They struggled previously trying to keep old bits of the plant going when they had really reached the end of their life.
“Now they can come to us and remind us they have seen a piece of equipment in the workshop a few times and we can tell them how long it is before that piece is due to be replaced.”
The fleet management system allows Shuttlewood and his team to view utilisation reports to see the hours that each piece of equipment is doing annually and then decide if they can swap or replace equipment as needed.
“It has streamlined our operations and made things much more cost effective. My fleet coordinator and I can click a button to get up next year’s program. We can also look at the light fleet and let council administrators know where costs can be saved – to see if we need all the vehicles or if we can make two vehicles into one,” he says.
Ross Moody, IPWEA National Executive Officer, says the tools were developed directly in line with the IPWEA Plant & Vehicle Management Manual, which is the primary reference for fleet managers in Australia.
“Previously, fleet managers may have been using spreadsheets to work out whole-of-life costs, trying to factor in all the derivatives,” he says. “The online tool system follows all those calculations and can do things like decide on the optimum replacement time for vehicles.”
“For the whole-of-life costs, the tools give you a predicted budget of what an asset is going to cost over the life of that asset.
“For example, it can calculate how much more it will cost you as its maintenance increases. The calculator will determine, for example, that a particular asset will cost you $X over an average of X number of years and from there a fleet manager can determine whether that asset is financially viable.”