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Technicians can provide critical feedback when evaluating a fleet’s asset strategy. (Rush Enterprises)

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"Keep, trade or sell.” That’s the age-old question that often keeps fleet managers and executives up at night when it comes to vehicle acquisition. Sound familiar?

The decision on how long to hold on to a major rolling asset presents both a perplexing technical challenge as well as an exercise in capital management. With the rapid evolution of multiple technologies affecting the safety, environmental performance and operational efficiency of new heavy-duty commercial vehicles, there are several opportunities for fleets to upgrade and replace equipment.

In addition to technological advances, regulatory mandates at the federal and state levels are significantly affecting planning and execution for equipment procurement. ’ conducted a 2024 fleet member survey to determine how approaching emissions technology mandates may be affecting early procurement planning.

The results indicated the regulations are likely to impact capital expenditures in the procurement of Class 8 vehicles, where a significant percentage of the responding fleets indicated that they would pursue either a pre-buy, a low-buy or combination strategy. Class 7 fleet operators indicated they would change their strategy, with about an even divide among pre-buy, low-buy and combination strategies.

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Moreover, the electrification movement, driven either by regulatory mandate or corporate sustainability strategy, also influences turnover cycle in existing fleet inventories, presuming a relatively static operational profile. Even in the absence of a commercial electric vehicle acquisition plan, optimizing the total cost of operation over the life of a Class 7-8 tractor remains a critical factor of corporate profitability. As a result, determining the optimal time to sell, trade or keep a Class 7-8 tractor is just as important as the new equipment-buying decision. Recovery of equity in a selling environment must be balanced against the application of residual value in a trade to mitigate the acquisition cost of a new tractor and the contribution toward bottom-line profit/loss by continuing to operate a partially or fully depreciated asset.

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To help fleets in this critical decision-making process, TMC recently published a new recommended practice, developed by its S.16 Service Provider Study Group, in cooperation with the S.5 Fleet Maintenance Management Study Group. TMC RP 1620, Guidelines for Keeping, Trading or Selling a Class 7-8 Tractor, appears in the Council’s 2025 RP Manual Supplement, released in April of this year. TMC Task Force members recognized that asset retention is a key factor in trucking, due to the complexities and variability across the scope of the industry. They also recognized that maintenance personnel can provide valuable and critical feedback when it comes time to evaluate a fleet’s asset strategy and replacement decisions since they are stakeholders in the corporate process.

The sell/trade/keep decision has a major influence on the operational costs for preventive maintenance and total cost of ownership, impacted by several important factors including:

• The ease of repair, against industry standard repair times��or against the fleet’s own history.
• Extended fluid change intervals, due to the availability of new-generation synthetic products.
• Improved vehicle engineering and design in recent generations of tractors, which have led to reduced engine wear and extended component service life.
• The impact of predictive maintenance upon reduced downtime and preventive maintenance costs.
• The impact of advanced emission systems on equipment reliability and regulatory compliance costs.

Other important considerations factoring into the decision include:

• The safety equipment installed on the vehicle, including advanced driver assistance systems��as well as such equipment that may be available on replacement (new) tractors.
• Driver satisfaction, based on driver experience with existing equipment and advance impressions of new equipment/technologies.
• The effects of geography, climate, roadway conditions and other regional factors on operational costs.
• The availability of new vehicle powertrain options, such as CNG/LNG, electric, etc.
• The effects of mileage, engine hours and time in service upon the fleet’s history of trade cycle determination.
• The market for selling into a secondary owner or as it affects trade-in values.

There also are historical purchasing indicators and metrics that are used by dealers and other companies to forecast future values. The Equipment Value Index, for example, is a metric created by Sandhill Publishing that accurately tracks asset values over time.

One of the key maintenance contributors to the residual asset value and “salability” of a tractor is how well its maintenance history is documented. Utilization of various TMC RPs in the fleet’s maintenance program and the documentation for that asset will positively impact value. RP 1620 provides a table of Recommended Practices relevant to the trade cycle decision process. This includes contribution of maintenance tracking using TMC’s Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards.

In addition to the extensive discussion of the factors heretofore mentioned, RP 1620 is supplemented by a calculator tool, a Microsoft Excel-based spreadsheet, accompanied by a fleet-strategy questionnaire and unit evaluation data sheet. This tool can be used for single and multiple vehicle evaluations. Entering this data into the spreadsheet will result in a visual display of the trade/sell potential for that asset as a “meter,” as shown below.

The RP 1620 Calculator is available for download via the Council’s 2025 RP Supplement section on TMC Connect at��tmcconnect.trucking.org.

Wayne Skinner, senior vice president of maintenance for National Express, chairs TMC’s S.5 Fleet Maintenance Management Study Group.

“There are a number of considerations when determining the most optimal time to trade or sell an asset — which is what led to the creation of this RP 1620 and the calculator tool,” Skinner said.

While there are many variables that go into the decision of when to sell, trade or keep a tractor, RP 1620 provides information to help a fleet better understand those variables, and manages its current and future planning toward retention and/or replacement of tractor assets.