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The average age of fleet vehicles continued to rise in 2023, following a trend that has now been seen for several years, according to data from Epyx.
The fleet software company said data from its 1link Service Network showed that the average age of a fleet car at the point of service of repair last year was exactly three years old, compared with 2.86 in 2022, 2.74 in 2021, 2.55 in 2020, and 2.4 in 2019.
The average for vans was 3.58 years old, up from 3.03 in 2019.
Epyx chief commercial officer Tim Meadows said that one of the persistent effects of the Covid-19 pandemic for fleets had been an ongoing ageing of the vehicles they operated.
He said: "While we're now in a situation where something of a recovery has taken place, car and van production over the last few years has been much reduced.
"What is perhaps surprising in looking at our statistics, bearing in mind that vehicle supply has improved substantially, is that the rate of ageing does not appear to be slowing and is still increasing for both cars and vans. It's clearly going to take some time for this metric to stabilise and start to fall.
"This has very real repercussions for vehicle operations in practical terms. Older vehicles, especially those with higher mileages, will always tend to need more SMR. They especially have an increased propensity for major components to fail, such as gearboxes.
"This is not just expensive, but means cars and vans spend more time in workshops, unavailable for use."
Evidence of this increased SMR requirement can be seen from Epyx's data, which also shows that vehicle off-road times - the time between when a vehicle enters a workshop and is finally repaired - have increased. In 2023, the average was 1.91 days, compared with 1.74 in 2022 and 1.63 in 2021.
Epyx has also reported an increase in lead times - the average time between when a company vehicle booking was created to when the vehicle went in for work - from 11.87 days in 2021, to 12.92 in 2022, to 13.74 in 2023.
Meadows said: "Because fleet vehicles are generally needing more SMR as they age, there is more downtime. Again, this is just an unavoidable effect of operating ageing cars and vans.
"It also means providers of SMR are under pressure to meet the needs of these older fleets. It is a question of an increased degree of demand meeting a level of capacity that is largely unchanged, and lead times are continuing to rise."
Meadows said that all of these findings underlined the need for fleets to proactively examine their SMR strategies regularly, to extract the maximum useability and value from older fleet assets.
He said: "Fleets are very much in a position where the cost of parts and labour is rising, while their need for SMR is also increasing thanks to these ageing fleets. We're engaged in ongoing conversations with many of our customers about the best ways that our technology can be used to minimise spending in this area as much as possible and there are many interesting and effective measures being put in place."
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