Dive Brief:

• The governing concept for evaluating a fleet should be productive hours available going forward.
• Trucks that have been kept in use during the downturn have fewer hours left in their lives than they had several years ago.
• The fleet average life remaining is pulled down by the older rigs, diminishing the effect of new trucks.

Dive Insight:

Equipment consultant Mike Vorster to think about remaining life in their fleets rather than about individual trucks' lives. If you give every truck an expected useful life, say 30,000 hours, you can total the remaining hours of all the trucks in your fleet, old and new, and divide that number by 30,000 to find out how many trucks you effectively have for your business.