Most fleet operators know whether their business is profitable. Very few know which specific vehicles are making money and which are destroying it. The difference between these two levels of understanding is the difference between managing a fleet and guessing about it.
Per-vehicle P&L analysis is the practice of attributing both revenue and costs to individual assets, so you can see exactly which vehicles are contributing to the business and which are a drag on it. This guide explains how to build a per-vehicle P&L and use it to make better fleet decisions.
Why Per-Vehicle P&L Matters
Consider a fleet of 15 tippers. The business as a whole is marginally profitable - revenue covers costs with a small surplus. But when you break it down by vehicle, the picture is very different:
- 8 vehicles are generating healthy margins
- 4 vehicles are breaking even
- 3 vehicles are consistently loss-making
Without per-vehicle P&L, you would never know this. You would continue deploying the loss-making vehicles, subsidising their costs with the profits from the better performers, and wondering why margins are so thin.
With per-vehicle P&L, you can make decisions: redeploy the loss-makers to different routes, investigate why their costs are so high, or make the case for replacement.
Revenue Inputs: Trips and Freight
The revenue side of a per-vehicle P&L comes from the trips that vehicle completed. For each vehicle, you need to capture:
- Number of trips completed in the period
- Revenue per trip (based on the applicable rate schedule)
- Total revenue for the period
In a well-managed operation, this data flows automatically from the freight order management system. Each trip is linked to a vehicle, a driver, a freight order, and an invoice. The revenue is attributed to the vehicle without any manual calculation.
For operators who do not yet have this level of integration, the starting point is ensuring that every trip is recorded against a specific vehicle and that the revenue for each trip is captured.
Cost Inputs: Fuel, Tyres, Maintenance, Tolls
The cost side of the per-vehicle P&L requires capturing all direct costs against the vehicle:
Fuel
Fuel is typically the largest direct cost. It should be captured per vehicle, per fill-up, with the odometer reading at each fill. This allows you to calculate:
- Fuel cost per kilometre
- Fuel consumption (litres per 100 km)
- Variance from fleet average (which vehicles are consuming more than expected)
Tyres
Tyre costs should be allocated to the vehicle at the time of fitment, not when the tyre is eventually worn out. This gives a more accurate picture of the cost in the period when the tyre is being used.
Maintenance
Every work order completed on a vehicle should be costed and allocated to that vehicle. This includes parts, labour, and any subcontractor costs. The total maintenance cost per vehicle per period is a critical input to the P&L.
Tolls
For vehicles running on toll roads, toll costs should be captured per vehicle. Many telematics systems can provide this data automatically from e-tag records.
Driver Costs
Driver wages and allowances can be allocated to vehicles if drivers are consistently assigned to specific vehicles. In operations where drivers rotate between vehicles, driver costs are typically treated as a fleet overhead rather than a per-vehicle cost.
Fixed vs Variable Costs
Not all costs vary with usage. Understanding the distinction between fixed and variable costs is important for per-vehicle P&L analysis.
Variable costs change with usage:
- Fuel
- Tyres
- Maintenance (to a significant degree)
- Tolls
Fixed costs are incurred regardless of usage:
- Depreciation
- Insurance
- Licence fees
- Finance costs (if the vehicle is financed)
For per-vehicle P&L, both types of costs should be included. Fixed costs are typically allocated on a monthly basis regardless of how much the vehicle was used. Variable costs are allocated based on actual usage.
A vehicle that sits idle for a month still incurs its fixed costs. This is an important consideration when making deployment decisions.
Building Your Fleet P&L Dashboard
A useful fleet P&L dashboard shows, for each vehicle over a selected period:
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Revenue | Total freight revenue attributed to the vehicle |
| Fuel cost | Total fuel spend |
| Tyre cost | Tyre spend allocated to the period |
| Maintenance cost | All work orders completed |
| Toll cost | Toll charges |
| Fixed costs | Depreciation, insurance, licence |
| Total cost | Sum of all costs |
| Gross margin | Revenue minus total cost |
| Margin % | Gross margin as a percentage of revenue |
| Cost per km | Total cost divided by kilometres run |
| Revenue per km | Revenue divided by kilometres run |
When you can see this data for every vehicle, ranked by margin, the decisions become obvious. The bottom performers need investigation. The top performers show you what good looks like.
Using P&L Data to Make Fleet Decisions
Per-vehicle P&L data supports several important fleet management decisions:
Replacement decisions - When a vehicle's maintenance costs are rising and its revenue-generating capacity is declining, the P&L makes the replacement case clearly. You are not replacing a vehicle because it feels old - you are replacing it because the numbers say it is no longer profitable.
Route optimisation - If certain vehicles consistently underperform on certain routes, the data may indicate a mismatch between vehicle specification and route requirements. Moving a vehicle to a different route may improve its P&L significantly.
Driver accountability - When driver costs (fuel consumption, maintenance caused by driving behaviour) are allocated to vehicles, and drivers are consistently assigned to specific vehicles, the P&L becomes a driver performance tool as well.
Maintenance investment decisions - When a vehicle's P&L is marginal, the question of whether to invest in a major repair becomes data-driven. If the repair cost exceeds the expected future contribution of the vehicle, replacement is the better decision.
Fleet P&L in T-ERP
T-ERP's Fleet Management module builds the per-vehicle P&L automatically from operational data. Revenue flows in from completed freight orders and invoices. Costs flow in from fuel captures, work orders, tyre fitments, and toll records.
The fleet P&L dashboard is available in real time - not as a month-end exercise, but as a live view of how each vehicle is performing. Managers can drill down from the fleet summary to individual vehicle detail, and from vehicle detail to the specific trips, work orders, and fuel fills that make up the numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I allocate overhead costs to individual vehicles?
Common approaches include allocating overhead proportionally to revenue, to kilometres run, or to a fixed amount per vehicle per month. The most important thing is consistency - choose a method and apply it uniformly so that comparisons between vehicles are meaningful.
What if drivers rotate between vehicles?
Driver costs can be excluded from the per-vehicle P&L and treated as a fleet overhead, or they can be allocated based on the trips each driver completed in each vehicle. The latter is more accurate but requires trip-level driver assignment data.
How often should I review per-vehicle P&L?
Monthly is the minimum. For active fleets, a weekly review of the key metrics (cost per km, revenue per km, margin) allows you to catch problems early. A quarterly deep-dive review is useful for making replacement and investment decisions.
What is a good margin for a tipper fleet vehicle?
This varies significantly by operation type, route, and market conditions. As a general benchmark, a well-run tipper operation should target a gross margin of 15 to 25 percent per vehicle after all direct costs. Vehicles consistently below 10 percent warrant investigation.
Can I do per-vehicle P&L analysis in a spreadsheet?
Yes, but it becomes very time-consuming beyond about 10 vehicles. The data capture alone - fuel fills, work orders, tyre fitments - requires significant manual effort. A fleet management system automates the data capture and the P&L calculation, making it practical for any fleet size.