← Fleet repair-or-replace planner
This planner vs. paid fleet management software
Paid fleet management/maintenance software tracks every vehicle continuously, for a recurring per-vehicle fee. This free tool does one narrower thing, whenever you need it: rank which assets actually pay to replace this year against a fixed capital budget, valuing the downtime days most owners leave out.
What each one is for
Paid fleet management/maintenance software — the category that includes work-order tracking, inspection checklists, service scheduling, and often telematics or fuel-card integration — is built for continuous, day-to-day record-keeping across a fleet, usually priced per vehicle per month. It is the right tool once you are managing enough vehicles that ongoing tracking justifies the subscription.
This planner is a free, single-purpose worksheet for one recurring decision: given the repair spend and downtime you already know for each vehicle or machine, which ones actually pay to replace this year, and in what order against your capital budget. It holds no vehicle database, schedules no maintenance, and forgets your figures on refresh unless you export them.
See why downtime decides this for the arithmetic this planner runs.
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| Do I need ongoing service records, inspections, or driver logs for my fleet? | Fleet management software — this planner keeps none of that. |
| Which of my vehicles actually pay to replace this year, given a fixed capital budget? | This planner — free, in your browser, no account. |
| What does keeping an asset really cost once downtime is counted? | This planner's per-asset arithmetic. |
| Should I track fuel, mileage, or telematics across my fleet day to day? | A different, larger decision this planner does not address. |
| Is my data uploaded anywhere? | No. Everything stays in this browser tab; nothing is sent to a server. |
A fleet already paying for management software can still use this planner for the annual capital-budget decision: pull each vehicle's repair spend from the software's own records, estimate downtime days from memory or the software's out-of-service log, and run the comparison here. The two are complementary rather than competing.
This planner needs no account and no sign-in: it is a static page, the arithmetic runs in your browser, and nothing you type is uploaded anywhere.
Common questions
Should I use this planner or paid fleet management software?
They answer different questions. Fleet management/maintenance software tracks every vehicle continuously — work orders, service history, inspections, sometimes telematics — for a recurring per-vehicle fee, and is worth it once you are managing enough vehicles that continuous tracking pays for itself. This planner does one narrower thing, for free, whenever you need it: given the repair spend and downtime you already know for each asset, which ones actually pay to replace this year, and in what order against your capital budget. A small fleet can use this planner without ever paying for ongoing tracking software; a larger one often uses both — the software for day-to-day records, this planner for the annual capital-budget decision.
Does this replace fleet management software?
No, and it is not built to. This planner has no vehicle database, no maintenance scheduling, no inspection checklists, no telematics, and no multi-user access — it holds only what you type in for one planning session, in your own browser, and forgets it on refresh unless you export it. If you need ongoing service records, driver logs, or fuel and mileage tracking across a fleet, that is what fleet management software is for.
Why not just use the repair-vs-replace report my fleet software already generates?
Check what it actually reports first. Many fleet-software repair-cost views total maintenance spend per vehicle, which is only half of this decision — the other half, downtime cost, usually is not tracked as a dollar figure at all because it depends on what your crew would have billed that day, something fleet software does not know. This planner asks for that number directly and puts it in the same comparison as the repair spend and the replacement's equivalent annual cost, then ranks the whole fleet against one capital budget.
Is this planner free because it is a stripped-down version of a paid product?
No — there is no paid tier, no vehicle limit, and no upsell. It is a static, client-side worksheet with one job: cost repair-or-replace including downtime, then rank a fleet against a budget. It does not compete with fleet management software's actual job, which is continuous, multi-user record-keeping this tool was never built to do.
Open the repair-or-replace planner, or read why downtime decides this.