Costs • Fleet
How to track fleet costs per vehicle
A fleet run without per-vehicle costs operates on instinct: you don't know which car is expensive to keep and which is profitable. Correct cost tracking combines all expenses — fuel, insurance, maintenance, tyres and depreciation — and relates them to kilometres. Below you'll see how to track fleet costs per vehicle, step by step.
The essential steps (short answer)
- Log every expense per vehicle: fuel, insurance, maintenance, tyres.
- Record the mileage at every refuel and every service.
- Calculate the monthly and annual cost per vehicle, then the cost per km.
- Add depreciation (loss of value) to get the total cost of ownership (TCO).
- Compare vehicles against each other and identify the ones expensive to keep.
Why cost per km matters
- Cost per km fairly compares different vehicles, regardless of how many kilometres they cover.
- Two cars with the same monthly cost can have very different cost per km — one drives far less.
- A rising cost per km signals wear, higher consumption or increasingly frequent maintenance work.
Table: cost components and what raises them
Cost components of a fleet vehicle
| Component | What raises it | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel | Consumption above the vehicle average | Check tyres, driving style, faults |
| Maintenance | Increasingly frequent service work with age | Evaluate replacing the vehicle |
| Insurance & taxes | Claims, vehicle age | Compare offers at renewal |
| Depreciation | High mileage, unpopular model | Plan the resale at the optimal time |
A real comparison example
Example: a fleet of 15 vehicles. Two cars had an almost equal monthly cost — about 2,000 lei. But calculating cost per km revealed a big gap: the first did 3,000 km/month (0.67 lei/km), the second only 900 km/month (2.22 lei/km). The second car was sitting idle in the fleet and was reassigned. Without cost-per-km tracking, the difference would have stayed invisible.
Common mistakes when tracking costs
- Tracking only the total fleet cost — you don't know which vehicle drags down profitability.
- Not linking expenses to mileage — you can't calculate cost per km.
- Ignoring depreciation, even though it is often the largest cost component.
How 4fleet helps
- Automatically aggregates all expenses per vehicle: fuel, insurance, maintenance and tyres.
- Monthly, annual and per-km cost, plus total cost of ownership (TCO), for each vehicle.
- Comparison between vehicles, so you know which is worth keeping and which to replace.