Fleet Total Cost of Ownership Calculator
Purchase price is the number everyone negotiates and the smallest part of what a vehicle actually costs. This calculator works out the total cost of ownership across the whole holding period, including the depreciation and downtime that never appear on an invoice.
Your numbers
What you paid for the vehicle, before financing.
Realistic disposal value at the end of the holding period.
How long you keep the vehicle before disposal.
Average annual distance for this vehicle.
Real-world consumption, not the manufacturer figure.
Servicing, parts, tyres and unplanned repairs.
Days the vehicle cannot earn because it is off the road.
Contribution the vehicle would have earned. Enter 0 to exclude.
Result
Cost per kilometre
0.783
Total cost of ownership over 540,000 km and 6 years.
- Total cost of ownership
- 422,880
- Cost per year
- 70,480
- Depreciation
- 60,000
- Fuel
- 267,840
- Maintenance and tyres
- 43,200
- Insurance, tax, licensing
- 28,800
- Downtime cost
- 23,040
The formula
- Depreciation = Purchase price − Resale value
- Fuel = (km per year ÷ 100) × L/100km × Fuel price × Years
- Maintenance = Maintenance per year × Years
- Insurance = Insurance per year × Years
- Downtime = Downtime days × Lost margin per day × Years
- TCO = Depreciation + Fuel + Maintenance + Insurance + Downtime
- Cost per km = TCO ÷ (km per year × Years)
Assumptions and limits
- Costs are treated as constant across the holding period. In reality maintenance rises and fuel price moves — re-run with a range rather than trusting one figure.
- Financing and interest are excluded. If the vehicle is on a loan or lease, add the finance cost separately.
- Depreciation is straight-line across the period. Actual depreciation is steepest in year one.
- Downtime cost is opportunity cost. Enter 0 for the lost-margin field if you only want cash costs.
- Currency is unit-agnostic — enter every field in the same currency and read every result in it.
Why purchase price is the wrong number to optimise
A heavy commercial vehicle typically costs more to fuel over six years than it cost to buy. Depreciation usually outweighs maintenance. Neither of those shows up in the negotiation that fleets spend the most energy on, which is the sticker price.
That is what total cost of ownership is for: it converts a purchase decision into an operating decision. The cheaper vehicle that burns four litres more per hundred kilometres is not cheaper — it is a payment plan you did not agree to.
The cost most fleets leave out
Downtime is the line item that almost never appears in a TCO spreadsheet, because it is not an invoice. Nobody bills you for a vehicle that is not working. But a truck in a workshop is earning nothing while depreciation, insurance and financing continue at exactly the same rate.
That is why this calculator asks for it explicitly. If you would rather see cash costs only, set the lost-margin field to zero — but the comparison between two vehicles is often decided by exactly this number.
Using cost per kilometre honestly
Cost per kilometre is useful for comparing vehicles doing similar work, and misleading for comparing vehicles that do not. A low-mileage urban vehicle will show a high cost per kilometre because fixed costs are spread thinly, which does not mean it is badly run.
Compare like with like: same duty cycle, same route type, same load profile. Then the number tells you something. Across the whole mixed fleet, it mostly tells you the fleet is mixed.
Frequently asked questions
At minimum: depreciation (purchase price minus resale), fuel, maintenance and tyres, and insurance, tax and licensing. Fleets that want a decision-grade number also include downtime as opportunity cost, and financing where the vehicle is not bought outright. Driver wages are usually excluded, because they follow the route rather than the vehicle.
It depends on utilisation. For a low-mileage vehicle, depreciation usually dominates. For a long-haul truck running high annual distance, fuel typically overtakes it. This is exactly why the calculator breaks the total down rather than only reporting one figure — the split tells you which lever is worth pulling.
If the vehicle is financed, yes — interest is a real cost of owning it. This calculator excludes it deliberately to keep the comparison between vehicles clean, since finance terms often differ for reasons that have nothing to do with the vehicle. Add interest to the annual cost if you need the fully-loaded figure.
It is exactly as accurate as its inputs, and two of them are guesses: resale value and future fuel price. Treat the output as a comparison tool between options rather than a forecast. Run it twice with pessimistic and optimistic resale figures — if the ranking of two vehicles does not change, the decision is safe.
A calculator uses the averages you type in. Fleet Analytics uses what actually happened: real consumption per vehicle from fuel sensors, real maintenance spend from work orders, and real downtime from service history. The arithmetic is the same — the difference is that the inputs stop being estimates.
Stop estimating. Measure it.
Fleet TCO Calculator gives you the arithmetic. Fleet Analytics Software gives you the live numbers from your own fleet.