Eye Opening Insights
“ Having access to industry context is truly eye-opening,” Duke said.“ When you can see what best-in-class fleets are doing, it highlights best practices and sparks meaningful changes within your own operation.”
Utilimarc’ s approach to benchmarking enables utility fleets to assess their performance in a highly granular way— by fleet size, region, vehicle class or other relevant dimensions— while also comparing against broader industry averages.
“ An accurate, peer-to-peer benchmark helps you understand exactly where you stand,” Milner related.“ It’ s not just about meeting industry norms it’ s about revealing opportunities to improve.”
According to Milner, benchmarking insights can be applied across all facets of fleet operations, from shop productivity to vehicle utilization. Key benefits include:
• Identifying performance gaps by comparing current practices to industry bestin-class standards.
• Setting and measuring improvement goals based on concrete, data-driven insights.
• Staying ahead of emerging trends to gain a strategic edge in a rapidly evolving industry. Benchmarking metrics provide a clear path to making decisions about maintenance and repair activities that improve performance and reduce downtime, Duke noted. Fleets see how they stack up against other operations in a very granular way as well as compared to industry averages.
Benchmarking Value
“ The ability to view technician productivity through the lens of a benchmark highlights its true value,” Milner said.“ By analyzing your maintenance program, whether it’ s in-house, outsourced or a mix of practices, you gain a clear picture of shop throughput and technician efficiency.”
Milner offered a common example: For a full-time technician working 2,080 hours annually, the industry benchmark is around 1,500 direct labor hours, defined as time spent actively working on a repair order.“ If your fleet is falling below that
RIGHTSIZING YOUR FLEET
In addition to improving maintenance and repair operations, fleets are often under increasing pressure to lower operating costs. One proven strategy is rightsizing, optimizing the number of vehicles and equipment to match actual operational needs.
The first step in a rightsizing initiative is a utilization study. But not all utilization metrics are created equal.
“ Looking only at total mileage can be misleading, especially for utility trucks that spend significant time at jobsites,” said Paul Milner, VP of operations at Utilimarc.“ Similarly, averaging usage over a month or year can obscure important daily patterns. For example, a truck that makes one long trip per month could appear identical, in terms of mileage, to a truck that’ s used for short trips every single day.”
Utilimarc’ s rightsizing methodology is designed to go deeper. The model analyzes 12 to 24 months of utilization and work order data by vehicle class and location, taking into account seasonal demand, storm response, mutual aid, rental replacements and downtime for maintenance or repairs. The result is a more accurate picture of how many vehicles are truly needed on a typical workday.
In one case, Utilimarc worked with a large fleet that housed 68 pickup trucks at its primary garage. The study revealed that on an average weekday only 42 trucks were in use. Most days, between 35 and 55 trucks were deployed.
Effective rightsizing analyses use utilization and work order data by vehicle class and location, taking into account seasonal demand, storm response, mutual aid, rental replacements and downtime for maintenance or repairs, resulting is a more accurate picture of how many vehicles are truly needed on a typical workday.
A deeper analysis of historical data showed that 57 trucks would be enough to meet demand on 100 % of usage days. A fleet of just 42, however, would only be sufficient half the time.
Based on these insights, Utilimarc recommended a right-sized fleet of 58 trucks, enough to maintain full operational coverage while removing or reallocating 10 vehicles. The impact? An estimated $ 540,000 saved in acquisition costs, plus $ 35,000 in annual operating savings for fuel, maintenance, licensing, tolls and administrative overhead.
12 July 4, 2025 www. contractorshotline. com