American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council and Decisiv Inc., reported during TMC’s Fall Meeting & Transportation Technology Exhibition, that costs for parts and labor for repairs rose over the first six months of the year. According to the Decisiv and TMC North American Service Event Benchmark Report, labor costs for repair and maintenance increased 2.6% between the 1st and 2nd quarters in 2021 and overall parts costs increased by 2.8%. In that same period, parts costs for Tires increased by 10.7% and Transmissions part costs rose 9%.
“The increases in costs for parts and labor reflect the changes taking place in the North American economy,” said Decisiv President and CEO Dick Hyatt. “Ongoing economic growth has led to a rise in freight volume and demand for carrying capacity. That is also being driven higher by the need to replenish supply chains that have been depleted due to manufacturing and distribution shutdowns during the pandemic.
“For fleets, that activity has increased vehicle mileage as well as meant the addition of more trucks, both of which drive up service activity,” he said. “Higher parts prices may have contributed as well, but in all cases we do not see a drop in efficiency and productivity taking place among the nation’s fleet maintenance or service provider operations. They are continually striving to maintain the highest possible levels of asset performance and uptime.”
Focusing on parts and labor pricing year over year revealed that the three most significant changes between Q2 2020 and Q2 2021 were in Lighting systems, which were up 17.4% while Transmissions costs rose 16.4% and Brakes costs increased 11.1%.
The report covers power unit parts and labor costs in the nine top Vehicle Maintenance Reporting System (VMRS) System Level Code categories, including Brakes, Steering, Tires, Transmissions, Electrical, Charging, Lighting, Exhaust and Engines.
The Decisiv/TMC North American Service Event Benchmark reports are made possible because of the rapidly growing amount of data being collected on service and repair events for the more than 7 million commercial assets operating across the U.S. and Canada that are being serviced on Decisiv’s SRM platform. The summaries are compiled from more than 600,000 monthly service maintenance and repair operations conducted across nearly 5,000 service locations.
The monthly benchmark reports provide a detailed profile of service costs monthly, quarterly and annually, and on a regional basis. The partnership between Decisiv and TMC to produce the North American Service Event Benchmark reports was announced earlier this year.
